As a citizen of Ontario and…

As a citizen of Ontario and Registered Dietitian, I urge you, please do not rip up our bike lanes.

There are many stats as to why this will not help traffic congestion (please see link attached), but I would also like to share my personal story to help the stats come to life.

I work in a hospital in downtown Toronto and commute every day by bicycle. With housing prices as they are, I cannot afford a car and parking. Cycling to work is faster than taking TTC for me!

I have been bicycle commuting for over 10 years and can tell you 100% that the Bloor bike lanes, including on Bloor St West, have increased my safety on the road, and also increased the number of co-cyclists I see every day alongside me. They have also made me comfortable using a bicycle as transportation with my 2 year old daughter as well.

I am deeply concerned about daughter's future with global warming. Bicycles are one way that we can do a little more to mitigate the negative effects of pollution.

As a Registered Dietitian, we also learned in our public health class that we need to "make the healthy choice the easy choice." By having bike lanes on roads that help us feel safe cycling and give us an efficient route to key locations, we are promoting this. My heart is also warmed to see more and more senior citizens and families travelling by bicycle: e-bikes in particular are making cycling more accessible to the masses and are gradually becoming more affordable.

I used to take the winters off cycling, but being pregnant during the peak pandemic kept me on my bike a full winter as I wanted to avoid close contacts on the TTC (and my pregnancy related nausea made stuffy bus rides hard). This opened my eyes that cycling throughout the winter IS very doable and enjoyable -- there are many many days where the bike lanes are clean and dry, and with the right outerwear it is no problem. I am seeing more and more cyclists through winter now too -- and Scandinavian countries are definitely a good model for this, where 80-85% of cyclists continue throughout winter!

I'd also like to add the I cycle several km on Bloor St in Toronto every day during rush hour on my commute-- and traffic is not bad at all. Cars are moving along; the odd place they are bunched up it is when they are waiting for a red light to turn green and then the road ahead has already cleared. It is construction projects where I've seen the traffic jams lie. Ripping out bike lanes would mean more construction! It would also pain me to see the financial investment of bike lanes lost, and tax money wasted removing them.

In summary, I beg you to NOT remove existing roads, and let cities who know their communities best make decisions about existing bike lanes. Please, instead invest the time, resources, energy into improving public transit.

I can honestly say bike lanes have changed my life for the better by getting me to work faster than the TTC can, improving my physical and mental health, and knowing that I am helping to minimize the effects of climate change for my daughter's future. And I am not alone- every day I am in good company of many other cyclists. Sometimes I count the cars and the bikes at a red light and there are more bikes!

Removing bike lanes will not remove cyclists-- we will not go back, cycling and public transportation are the future -- but will only increase traffic by slowing cars down to go around us, all whilst putting us at risk of harm or death.

Please, please think about safety and the environment. Please, focus on improving public transportation, not removing bike lanes.

To quote Doug Ford himself from TVO's "Political Blind Date" in 2017:
"We have to do everything we can to make sure there’s never a death in the city. One death is way too many when it comes to bicycle riders. We have to make sure that they’re safe."