There is no reason for the…

There is no reason for the provincial government to interfere with municipal manners like this.

The older cities like downtown Toronto or Ottawa, were built before the car and therefore most streets were not designed to be wide enough for both vehicle travel lanes and bike lanes. As such, these cities must decide between removing a lane to add in a bike lane or keeping the status-quo (which is often no bike lane or a 'painted lane' that offers no protection to cyclists).

I understand that congestion is a serious issue that cities and the province must tackle as our population grows but removing existing bike lanes and adding more bureaucratic barriers to building these infrastructure will not solve congestion. For example, look at downtown Toronto. There is gridlock in many major streets regardless if there is an existing bike lane or not. The reason for congestion is because the city street grid was not built to handle the sheer amount of automobile traffic that enters the city (especially via the Gardiner and Don Valley expressways).

The bill makes reference to 'getting drivers where they need to go faster' but it doesn't acknowledge other forms of transit. Pedestrians, cyclists and public transit users are also just as important (if not more important in the context of downtown Toronto). Will the province make bills that 'gets pedestrians, cyclists or transit users where they need to go faster'? Drivers already have various highways and large arterial roads to drive on. Cyclists barely have dedicated infrastructure themselves and pedestrians often have to deal with walking on streets that feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

If the province wants to 'fight gridlock', they can instead focus on speeding up the construction for various transit projects like the Eglinton LRT, Dundas BRT, Durham BRT and the GO Expansion Project. They should also support new projects as well like the modernization of the Toronto streetcar so that it reflects the quality of streetcar systems found in Europe or by expanding GO rail service by adding new lines that serve new areas (e.g. a midtown line, the Bolton line) and by adding new stations in an urban area to aid intraurban travel (e.g. new stations in Downtown Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo that let people travel within the same city and not just to and from another city).

If the province wishes truly wishes to be involved with traditionally municipal manners like this, then I hope that the province is willing to also partially fund the 'studies' for building future bike lanes and maybe even partially funding that actual construction of bike infrastructure.