I am a driver, and a cyclist…

I am a driver, and a cyclist, and a pedestrian. I have benefitted hugely from the implementation of bike lanes:

#1: It is based in populist ideas of how traffic works, rather than actual traffic management science. I beg this government to actually talk to experts in how and why traffic congestion forms. The idea that removing bike lanes will improve congestion goes against the way reality works. Removing bike lanes increases congestion (from bikers who will now drive), and increases death and injury for bikers who continue to bike on roads without protected lanes. That is, more injuries, more accidents, more congestion. If this government is serious about reducing congestion, then they should be investing in improvements to regional transit to give people non-car options for getting around. Building more highways funnels more cars into a city where there just isn't enough room for them, creating more, not less, congestion.

(Also, having parking along main roads closes a lane of traffic, and I don't see this bill suggesting taking out parking. Taking out a bike lane *is* taking out a lane of traffic, and often one with more throughput than the car lanes.)

#2: It is a huge waste of money doing something unnecessary. We already have a level of government to manage municipal roads -- our municipal governments. They have traffic experts and city planners and we pay them to do the work of planning this stuff. Having another level of government paying people to double-guess the experts -- apparently based on nothing but the Premier's "feels" -- is a waste of taxpayer money. We already have more qualified people doing the work -- leave them alone.

Traffic congestion *is* cars. Anything you do to encourage more driving will increase traffic. If the Provincial Government is serious about wanting to reduce traffic congestion and get people to places faster, they would focus on building more frequent and reliable regional transit, to give people more non-car options. This bill will achieve the opposite of what it sets out to do, at a completely unnecessary cost to the taxpayer.