ERO 019-9265 Response…

ERO 019-9265 Response to Bill 212: Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act (specifically, sections regarding the restriction of bike lanes)
I do not support the above legislation for the following reasons: it does not respect local democracy and municipal planning decisions; it will make it much more difficult or even impossible for Toronto to meet its climate emissions goals, specifically the city’s target to become carbon neutral by 2040; and the 48 million dollar price tag will put more cyclists in danger without achieving the professed goal of reducing traffic congestion.
1. Lack of Respect for Local Democracy
The City of Toronto (and other Ontario municipalities) is better able to make planning decisions based on local needs and local priorities than the provincial government. In the document “Impact of Bill 212: Bike Lanes Framework”, the Toronto city manager summarizes the impact of this legislation in a detailed, meticulously researched report. Among its conclusions, it states that “the absence of bikeways has a disproportionately negative impact on low-income communities and Indigenous, Black and other communities of colour.” It notes that Toronto is the busiest city in North America due to construction and that “the reduced network capacity due to construction-related road closures is a primary factor contributing to congestion across the city.”
Municipalities, like Toronto, know what their residents need and have local knowledge about the challenges they face, including gridlock. In fact, it is their responsibility as locally elected municipal governments to make these decisions.
2. Climate Goals
To achieve Toronto city council’s goal to become carbon neutral by 2040, it will have to reduce emissions from passenger vehicles which account for almost a quarter of its GHG emissions. The city has increased funding and capacity to expand and improve its cycling network, “spending $30 million on bikeways in 2023, the most it has ever invested in a single year” (Toronto Star, ‘A truly poisonous intervention’, September 26, 2024). In the same article, authors Kate Allen and Mahdis Habibinia state, “staff reports have consistently found that adding and improving [bike] lanes results in vastly more cyclists on these roads. At Adelaide and Richmond Streets at Spadina Avenue, for example, cyclist counts jumped from 562 in 2013 to 3,763 in 2022, an increase of 570 per cent, and the number of people using the city’s Bike Share system spiked from about 665,000 trips in 2015 to more than 4.5 million in 2022.”
The Transportation Tomorrow Survey, done in partnership with the province and Golden Horseshoe municipalities to support planning for transportation infrastructure, shows that in 2022, 5.8% of city commuters took bikes or other forms of “micromobility” to work. The number of daily cycling trips has more than tripled in two decades (55,000 in 2001 to 172,000+ in 2022). People are choosing to use bikes, scooters, etc. to get around. That means fewer cars on the road, and more people able to get to where they’re going without getting into a car.
Even so, Toronto has a long way to go to meet its climate targets and needs to take many more gas-powered cars off the road. Patricia Wood, a professor in York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, sums it up: “So to have the province even float the idea of reducing the possibility to create space for active transportation by prioritizing private automobiles over bike lanes is a truly poisonous intervention … even debating this only drags us backwards and wastes our time.”
3. Bike Lanes Save Lives
According to a Toronto Star editorial (September 25, 2024), research from around the world has shown that bike lanes separated from cars improve the safety of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists: “An American study published last November in the Journal of Transport and Health … found that protected bike lanes make roads significantly safer for cyclists and other users. Cities with dedicated bike lanes had 44 per cent fewer deaths and 50 per cent fewer serious accidents than other American cities”. The city manager’s Bike Impact report reveals that, “research and experience from across North America and around the world have shown that a connected and safe cycling network is a key part of mitigating congestion in a growing city, while improving safety and mobility….Independent peer-reviewed research has shown that the introduction of separated bikeways reduces the risk of cycling injury (about 9 times lower than a major street with parked cars and no cycling infrastructure). It also increases the feeling of comfort and safety for all road users.
My husband and I cycled in Germany in 2019 and can attest to that feeling of comfort and safety when we were able to cycle for long distances in separated bike lanes. They were an accepted part of the transportation infrastructure.
4. Blaming Bike Lanes for Congestion is Not Supported by Research
Both the Toronto Star editorial and the city manager’s report reiterate that “it isn’t cyclists and bike lanes that are the main culprits in creating gridlock. It is construction, road closures and traffic returning to pre-pandemic levels…. [I]n Paris, London and other metropolises, these lanes have often had the opposite effect [to gridlock], leading to more cyclists and fewer cars on the road.” Even “small reductions in the number of vehicles on the road can produce large improvements in traffic flow”.
5. $48 Million Dollars
Taxpayers will be on the hook for $48 million dollars (plus other costs the city of Toronto and other municipalities will face) to tear out bike lanes that will make the roads more dangerous, and won’t solve the problem of gridlock. This is a very expensive, ill-considered gambit.
I would suggest a better name for this bill would be “Failing to Reduce Gridlock, Endangering Lives For No Good Reason Act”.