I do not understand why the…

I do not understand why the Ontario government wants to implement such a short-term policy of spending more money to remove all the bike lanes after we have already spent all this time and money to get them all approved and built. Especially since many (most?) civil engineers and urban planners are beginning to agree that providing alternatives to driving is the only long term solution to dealing with population growth and meeting environmental goals. We can't keep looking to the urban development strategies of the 1960s Robert Moses era when we now have overwhelming evidence of the damage they've done to cities across North America.

Dedicated separated bike lanes keep cars and cyclists apart, improving safety and speed for both. When I ride my bike somewhere that has separated bike lanes, I'm not really worried about my safety. I don't have large vehicles passing uncomfortably close, sometimes at speeds of 80 km/h (or more). If a car so much as grazes me in those situations, I'm almost certainly dead.

I've had a few close calls over the past few decades of cycling. Thanks to all the new bike lanes we've built, I often don't think of cycling as a high-risk sport like rock climbing or skiing. It's something I can do to pick up groceries or get to a concert or game, thanks to the new bike lanes we've built in the last few years. I'd stopped biking when I moved to the city, opting instead to drive the few blocks to the nearby grocery store. The bike lanes we've built along Danforth in the last few years have allowed me to start biking there and back instead, and even to my job during rush hour in the summer. Do you want me back in a car during rush hour?

When I drive places, not having to worry about giving cyclists space when I pass them is also amazing. When passing a cyclist and the oncoming lane is busy, I often have to do this awkward dance of getting dangerously close to oncoming vehicles to give the cyclist enough room. If I can't pass safely, I'm stuck going as fast as the cyclist and increasing the road rage and angry honking of the people stuck behind me. So let's get them off the road by building them lanes. Not only that, but making biking safer will encourage people to bike instead of drive, which will get even more people off the road. Win-win!

The only cyclists we're going to get off the road by tearing out all the existing bike lanes are casual cyclists like you and me. But if you've ridden in the last few years since the pandemic, you know that the majority of cyclists are delivery drivers. They don't get into cars. Professional cyclists, like taxi drivers, are more than happy to play the aggressive road game with cars. They've got a job to do, with our without a dedicated bike lane. I don't want to have to deal with them on the street when I go somewhere, so let's build bike infrastructure.

One more lane isn't going to fix it. Seriously, look up Marchetti's constant and Braess's paradox. We have a lot of research from decades of highway construction that shows the problem is inescapable with every highway design we've tried. It's why we now have both the widest highway in North America and the worst traffic all on the same highway, and we're not even a third the size of New York or Mexico City, both of which still have reasonable congestion. Why is that? They both spent their transportation money over the last few decades on rail, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure, all of which have lower lifetime costs and higher commuter throughput than roads. It's just cost effective.

From a casual look at available research data, a single lane of cars can move about 2,000 people per hour, while the same lane for bikes can move 14,000 per hour. By replacing bike lanes with car lanes, we're reducing, not increasing, the number of people who can commute through the city. In case you were wondering, why has commuting gotten so slow since we built them? It's population growth. Since the pandemic started in 2019, there are over a million more people commuting into the city. That's the other problem with roads, they don't slow down linearly. They work fine up to about 70-80% capacity, and then suddenly they slow down significantly. Having so many people commuting has pushed us over that limit. Adding a few more lanes isn't going to give us that much headroom.

People drive when it's the most convenient way to get somewhere. If we reduce transportation options or make them impractical, we'll all be forced to get in our cars. I love that, depending on the distance, I can take the train, catch a flight, or ride my bike to my destination. The reality of southern Ontario makes anything but driving a non-starter in most places. I'd trade my flights for train travel, but Via Rail is slow and way too expensive. Go trains are far too infrequent on many routes, which means I often drive to a lot of places outside the city even though Go Train technically has a route that goes there. Inside the city, I can take the TTC just about anywhere long distance, and bike to a lot of medium to local places. As we've gotten more bike infrastructure, I've only imagined that this would increase. Hearing that we're going to remove all our bike lanes means I'll probably just get back in my car for short trips.

To solve the congestion problem, you need to fix the number, size and occupancy of cars coming into the city. You could subsidize telecommuting initiatives, give tax breaks to large employers/developers to build office buildings outside of Toronto, build more rail into the city and run more trains more often to get commuters off the road, put a toll on the DVP, discourage private cars from driving between Dufferin-Bloor-Parlement and build free parking structures on the outskirts, provide tax breaks or free parking for small cars and carpools, remove that one lane on the 401 that ends just past Salem in Ajax (so much traffic heading east is the result of that one lane ending).

In short, part of the solution is to get people out of cars and onto bikes, not off bikes and into cars. The bigger solution will require us to think more broadly than just cars when planning our transportation infrastructure for the next half century. I know it doesn't poll well, but trying not to deal with it for so long is why things have gotten so bad.