I genuinely believe blocking…

I genuinely believe blocking bike lanes is the worst thing we can do to address grid lock. I am going to write from the perspective of a Torontonian because this proposal is squarely aimed at the city and hopes to reduce people’s quality of life in the city.

Our overall public transportation is lacking and it’s showing in the form of gridlock on the highways not in the city centre. When the bike share program is growing at the rate that it is in Toronto, it’s telling us a couple things:

1- biking in the city as a reliable form of transportation is realistic and people are opting to do so.
2- our public transit system needs more lines and faster especially in the east west direction below bloor.

To combat traffic we need to get as many cars as we can off the road and people in those cars on public transit or other micro mobility devices such as bikes to the extent possible.

And on the bike lane topic I will give you one great example. I have been familiar with the Danforth area for over a decade now. Before the bike lanes that stretch just had cars parked on the right lane, cars and bikes weaving in and out of traffic to avoid parked cars causing more traffic and endangering lives. Now with the new configuration, micromobility users are safer. There is still parking on the street and the traffic flow is better than it was before bike lanes. Businesses are happier that people can bike down Danforth to get their errands done increasing business to the stores.

I think we need to be really careful about not taking a step back here. We’ve come a long way in making this city somewhat bike friendly in the past few years and a blow to that progress would surely be another dark episode of the Ford government.