I am concerned with this…

I am concerned with this bill for two main reasons. The first is the removal of the need for environmental assessments for the proposed Highway 413 development. There was a study by the Federal Highway Administration in the US that details all of the potential impacts of the extensive highway network within the US (Ref 1) This report clearly shows that there is significant wildlife disruption caused by these highways and underpins the complex nature of the interaction between roadways and surrounding wildlife. I therefore think it is imperative that an extensive study be conducted to better understand any potential impacts that could be caused by the new highway to allow for plans to be implemented to mitigate them prior to the highway's construction. To circumvent this process with a piece of legislation is an egregious misuse of power.

My second concern is to do with the proposed removal of existing bike infrastructure, alongside the need for the province to grant permission to install new complete streets. Putting to one side that this is an overstep by the provincial government into municipal affairs; it represents a huge step backwards in the development of Toronto's (and any other instances where the removal of bike lanes is being proposed) development. The MPPs keep referring to common sense policy but I am not sure of their definition of common sense. It doesn't feel like it would be common sense to spend, what is estimated to be in the realm of $48 million dollars of public money to contravene expert testimony, including recent comments from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (Ref 2) on measures that will fail to reduce congestion in the city. If the 'common sense' is that there are currently too many vehicles using the roadways of concern to warrant them being a single lane, then with the expanding population of the city, what is going to happen when there are too many vehicles using a roadway for two lanes to be enough? Multi-modal transport solutions represent the best opportunity to combat vehicle dependency. My final comment on this is that complete streets initiatives also act as traffic calming and make streets safer for everyone. This can be seen in the average speed reductions on Bloor Street over the Humber River bridge which were in excess of 70km/h (unacceptable for an inner city residential street) prior to the lanes being installed to around 56km/h after the installation. After 6 cyclist deaths so far this year in the city of Toronto, it feels irresponsible to revert back to our original unsafe road designs and put the cyclists who have completed over 360,000 trips on the Bloor Street bike lanes (based on the counter by High Park) back into harms way.