I exclusively drive my own…

I exclusively drive my own car and live in Brant County, though I visit Toronto once or twice a month. I don't understand why the government under Doug Ford believes these measures will improve traffic when every competent city planner says they will do the opposite. If it's an attempt to score political points with people like me who don't care about biking and generally drive everywhere, it's not going to work.

Let's consider what we're talking about here: Eliminating bike lanes on major streets in Toronto doesn't mean bikes will take back streets exclusively, they'll just use the car traffic lanes because it'll still be faster for them. This slows down traffic and makes it more dangerous and difficult to drive in Toronto. I don't want to run over a cyclist and have my life turned upside down for a year while I'm dealing with the fallout from that. Removing bike lanes makes that a lot more likely.

Highway 413 is a pointless boondoggle. It's just going to create more car-dependent housing which means more Ontarians will drive, and it doesn't even go anywhere useful! There are practically zero attractive destinations on the proposed route, so the extremely obvious result will be more traffic on the 401 and 400. Some people will feel like they're saving time once a week on the way to cottage country, but in reality it'll just shift the traffic north onto the 400 around Barrie. In fact it'll probably result in hours-long jams on highway 11 because of induced demand.

Stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. If you want to help drivers and decrease traffic, do what works: Get people off the road! Lots of Ontarians are struggling right now and if they had affordable housing they could live in, in an area with excellent public transit, they could save money and get out of the way of those of us who are more successful. It's not a liberal idea, it's a common sense idea. Developers can make more than enough money building dense transit-oriented communities, and as someone who lives in a rural area, that's what I want. It takes people off the road, and that's how you reduce traffic, period. Listen to the experts. All this other nonsense simply doesn't work.