I am a taxpayer living in…

I am a taxpayer living in the Parkdale High-Park riding. I own a car, cycle, walk and take transit to get where I need to be. It is abhorrent that the province of Ontario is proposing the use of my tax dollars to remove existing infrastructure and make it harder to keep our streets safer for vulnerable road users by creating useless barriers to expanding cycling networks. This money has better use improving transit times, among other things. Toronto is an expanding city, and people should not be able to drive wherever they want with ease, no other major city operates like that. London and New York for example have tolls that drivers must pay to enter downtown. I strongly support enacting tolls, people like the ministers supporting this bill do not even live in Toronto, their property taxes do not support maintaining Toronto's roads–why is their need to drive being prioritized? By removing bike lanes, the province will create MORE gridlock. Pushing cyclists into shared lanes will slow cars down even further (and create more deadly situations). As per the Ontario Highway Traffic Act, bicycles are vehicles and can take the entire lane when it is not safe to stay a meter away from the curb–which is often the case. Using bike lanes in a single city as a wedge issue to further divide the province is disappointing. I hope the province strongly considers a better use of our tax dollars to address the ACTUAL issues facing Ontarians today–housing, affordability, our crumbling healthcare system...