Bill 212 seems to be…

Bill 212 seems to be misguided. It claims to deal with traffic gridlock, but the methods it proposes would maintain or increase gridlock. This is supported by studies discussed in recent publications. For example:

Global studies show bike lanes can ease congestion, reduce emissions and are a boon to businesses
Research shows that dedicated bicycle lanes are not behind perceived traffic congestion and can have many benefits.
CBC Oct 22 2024

Shoshanna Saxe, Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure, said the city’s current problems are the result of a lack of proper investment in public transit combined with significant growth.
She said expanding road capacity and accommodating vehicles is not a sustainable solution.
“It’s a decade of unfortunate urban planning coming back to bite us … the physics of it is not possible. You cannot move millions of people around the city reliably in personal automobiles.”
Economists Matthew Turner and Gilles Duranton coined “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion,” based on a study that found that increased road capacity did not relieve a city’s traffic burdens …Their study of U.S. cities found that whenever a town expanded road capacity by 10 per cent, the amount of driving also went up by 10 per cent.
Globe and Mail Nov 12 2024

The key to solving Ontario’s traffic woes is not about maintaining the status quo of car-dominated roadways. Instead, we need to embrace multi-modal transportation — an approach that supports different forms of transport that cater to the needs of the people in each community.
OSPE firmly believes that each municipality should have the ability to design and implement transportation infrastructure that suits its communities’ unique needs. Different neighbourhoods face different challenges, and the solutions must be tailored accordingly.
Ontario Society of Professional Engineers Blog Nov 19 2024

The last quote points to a need for municipalities to have the ability to control their own transportation infrastructure, but Bill 212 counterintuitively opposes that ability. It proposes to add more red tape to municipalities’ ability to fight gridlock with effective deployment of cycling infrastructure. This translates to more years of gridlock while municipalities’ efforts to combat it are hamstrung. If the provincial government truly desired to combat gridlock, it should instead focus its efforts on expanding public transit, and redouble its efforts to open the badly needed Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
Tearing out recently built bike lanes is a reckless waste of taxpayer dollars that will not result in long term improvement of traffic gridlock. As cycling infrastructure has grown into a comprehensive interconnected network, so has demand for safe cycling options. There has been a huge increase in e-bike production in recent years. Municipalities should have the ability to develop a variety of modes of transportation as part of their strategy to combat gridlock.