If this was a priority for…

If this was a priority for the people of my municipality we could speak up at election time. It is ironic that while the province talks to the overreach of the feds out of one side of its mouth it does exactly the same thing to municipal governments out of the other side (repeatedly). This bill is unnecessary, if we don’t want our municipalities to put in bike lanes we will vote in a democratic election to that effect.

To the proposal itself, I have tried to start taking transit and biking into the office when I can in part because of the environmental benefits but also because it saves me money vs paying for parking. Bike lanes have allowed me to bike safely and when I drive it is also safer for everyone. Ironically, biking also gets me to where I need to go faster. So this proposal will put more people in cars, impacting air quality (note domino effect on health etc), making expensive parking harder to find, and jamming up roads so my drive is longer. For me it would remove the option to reduce my commuting time and would do so for many others in the future by adding red tape that stall new projects. On top of that, this proposal touts new highways, a huge capital infrastructure project and one of the biggest draws on provincial finances, which will impact my taxes and likely end up putting more of my money towards paying off debt then services and god forbid bike lanes to help me to get where I need to go faster.

What’s next sidewalks? I’m not sure the rationale would need to be much different.

Finally, I would strongly suggest consultation with municipalities because as ever this may be a perceived Toronto problem with a solution that doesn’t make sense elsewhere.

Please do not move this bill forward, it will have the opposite effect then what is intended and will likely make driving more dangerous and harder as many people will be biking in traffic lanes - unless we’re also going to ban biking.