I am resident who commutes…

I am resident who commutes to the Financial District for work, and I want to stress the importance of bike lanes. I've been a regular user of Bloor, as well as College, Richmond, and Adelaide, for years. I have seen how the increase in bike lanes has led to an increase in usage—particularly with the Toronto Bike Share network. I recently went back to law school, and would have loved to bike from downtown to York University campus—however, there was no safe north-south route across the city for me to do so.

I would recommend examining the growth of the Toronto Bike Share network in recent years, and consider the number of trips taken there alone. Growth in these trips has been increasing significantly in the past few years, particularly in the downtown core, and it is worth studying if this is due to the growth of the bike lane network.

I would also like to add that each of these trips means one less person taking our already disastrously crowded TTC network, or one less car or Uber occupancy. The population of Toronto will continue to increase, and we are not going to build any more roads. When thinking about how we can move people across the city, we need to consider how to make more trips with less reliance on cars, or gridlock will only get worse—and will be especially frustrating for the people who have no choice but to use their cars.

I acknowledge that there are fewer trips on bikes during the winter—but they don't entirely disappear. It may be worth looking at a seasonal system to grow on a core all-year cycling network artery: there may be sports where it is possible to add a lane back during December-March, and other sections where additional bike lanes (or spaces for pedestrians) are added during the summer.