Bike lane installations…

Bike lane installations already require an assessment of the road corridor, the use of the road right-of-way, the impact on traffic, and an assessment of whether it is a net good for the municipality. Requiring municipalities to constantly submit proposals for new bike infrastructure to the province is an overstep that serves to add red tape in the planning process that onerous on cash strapped cities. There are no criteria published for what would allow for a lane of traffic to be removed, which is concerning and suggests this is politically motivated, not logically motivated. Municipalities already have elections where residents are welcome to vote out the existing leadership if they don’t like the direction of their cities. Paternally reviewing every single bike lane proposal they are considering is not only unnecessary, it is adding additional layers of governmental and political review that don’t need to exist and overrides the will of the residents living in that area.

Why does the province view this as their challenge to solve when they don’t design the roads, don’t maintain the road network, and aren’t responsible for its upkeep? It seems punitive to require a municipality to maintain all of its lanes of traffic, even if the municipality no longer wants or is able to maintain it.

In larger cities like Toronto, the reality is traffic will never be good, nor should we expect it to be. There are simply too many people driving in the city and this will ONLY be addressed through adequate alternative transportation means. There are decades of transportation planning and engineering research to support this - it is not an ideological view but a realistic one.

The announcements surrounding this project identify “major arterials” as poor fits for cycling infrastructure. On the contrary, major roads are exactly where you want to provide active transportation and public transit, because that is where people are and where they are going. Bike lanes are only used when they are safe and useful, as part of a connected network. In the same way a driver would be less likely to drive if they could only drive on side streets, a cyclist is less likely to bike if they do not have adequate access to major destinations.

This act, in combination with the other car-oriented acts being proposed by the province, do not move us to a more sustainable transportation network and will entrench decades of poor land use and mode share. The environmental impact of further building outward is not only borne from fossil fuel use in current vehicles - it is also from expanding energy needs and removing additional green space and farmland. The reality is we need to work together to figure out how best to move the majority of people in large cities without cars.