I am a resident of downtown…

I am a resident of downtown Toronto living in the west end, very near the Bloor bike lane. I use every mode of transport: I take public transit, walk, bike, and drive to get around, depending on my needs. Out of these modes, I use public transit and my bicycle the most frequently to get to work.

I find the premier's attacks on bike lanes and this new proposed legislation to be appalling: both are ludicrously shortsighted, an attempt to usurp municipal powers to design roads with the safety of all users in mind, and an attack on my personal safety as a resident of Toronto.

I frequently use the Bloor bike lane that the mayor has been threatening to rip up. The bike lane has not only improved my quality of life significantly; it has also made my daily commute to work much safer, whether I am commuting by bike, on foot, or by public transport, because it calms all of the traffic along Bloor.

The thought of ripping up the Bloor bike lane when sections of it were completed only weeks ago is, frankly, heartbreaking. Residents in this area have been waiting to see roadwork around the ROM completed for years, not to mention around the rail overpasses near the Dundas West station. Why would the province waste millions of dollars to rip out bike lanes that were just installed this summer??

While Bloor is a main thoroughfare in this city, its above-ground function is not to shuttle as many cars as possible from one end to the other. Rather, it is lined with shops, small businesses, and tourist sites, and as such is more of a destination where people stop and spend time. As such, having one lane of traffic in each direction, plus bike lanes and wide sidewalks, serves the community best. It allows people to easily navigate to all the places they want to visit along Bloor.

The vast majority of people who need to transit along a large section of Bloor do so not above ground but underground, in the Line 2 subway. The presence of the subway underground allows the design of Bloor aboveground to be calm, with a minimum of traffic. If drivers wish to transit the city faster, they can use other streets with more lanes, such as Dupont. Or, even better, they can ditch their car and take transit!

At a time when we are feeling the effects of climate change more and more by the day, it is alarming to see our government so utterly fail to serve its citizens by trying to encourage more people, rather than fewer, to drive gas-guzzling vehicles. This is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing. We need more people to choose climate-friendly alternatives, such as biking, walking, and public transit. They will do so if the province works with the city to create safe streets that serve all road users—not only drivers.