According to the Toronto…

According to the Toronto Region Board of Trade's "Congestion What's at Stake in Toronto's 2023 Mayoral By-election" report that was published in 2023, traffic congestion in Toronto "costs the region $11 billion annually in lost productivity and opportunity." Although this $11 billion would not go solely to the government, at an 11% corporate tax rate, this could result in up to $1.21 billion in tax revenue. Although these figures are just focusing on the Toronto area, many other smaller cities and municipalities across the province would also see increased productivity should gridlock and traffic congestion be decreased.
Investments in public transport and alternative methods of transport across the province could greatly increase the productivity of the province, and even spur a strengthened economy due to increased mobility, and reduced travel times.
A 2017 report from the US department of transportation Federal Highway Administration titled "The Dutch Approach to Bicycle Mobility: Retrofitting Street Design for Cycling," states that the Netherland's high bicycle use results in an average lifespan increase of six months, while decreasing healthcare costs in the country by 19 € million. The report goes on to say "In addition, by providing an inexpensive alternative to both public transport and the car, the bicycle promotes social inclusion and access to jobs, services, and leisure in an efficient way. Investments on cycling do not come at the expenses of other road users. Evidence shows that policies to encourage bicycle users also benefit car drivers and the public transport network in terms of lower travel times, better accessibility and increased safety."
Despite the larger size of Ontario than the Netherlands, and the need for vehicular traffic to travel many of the vast distances between Ontario's cities and towns, the average commuting distance in Ontario is 12.5km as reported by Lena Ahmadi et al in the journal MDPI in 2012. This distance is shorter than the average commute in the Netherlands which was pegged at 18.5km as reported by Mike Schroten's MSc thesis at the Delft University of Technology in 2022. Despite the increased commute distance in the Netherlands, a larger fraction of the Dutch people commute to work by bicycle than those with similar commute distances in Ontario.
It is time that we stop incentivizing and requiring that individuals drive a car for every small task, and time that we look to other countries, and cities to see what we can do better. The lack of walkable and bike infrastructure connecting homes to schools, grocery stores and shopping centres in this province is quite frankly a joke to the rest of the world (outside of Canada and the United States), and it is high time that we look into our cities and urban development practices to produce towns and cities that are better connected, and provide residents multiple means of travel outside of owning a car.
In the words of Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." The same should be said for bikes, and those who use them to commute to work and perform daily tasks such as shopping or recreation.