This is intrusive provincial…

This is intrusive provincial overreach into immensely local decision making with respect to bike lane permissions. Urban planning principles all over the world, including from other Canadian cities such as Vancouver and Montreal, show that adding bike lanes and additional transportation options, reduces vehicle dependence, and gives people more options. Whereas adding additional car lanes just provides for induced demand, leading to more drivers.

Local city planners have the best feel for local conditions, when building comprehensive transit networks including bike lane grids, and public transit. Removing bike lanes creates less opportunities for families to go car-free by choice, less opportunity for healthy transportation, and creates more emissions. Bike lanes reduce car demand, leaving the remaining lanes (especially when fully segregated bike lanes are installed) flowing more freely.

The province does not need to micromanage these decisions from afar, just like the province did not need to ban ranked choice voting for the municipalities who wished to experiment with it. Let the cities plan in peace, without the extra layers of red tape and micromanagement that this government publicly says they want to reduce, but in practice is only increasing.

And sneaking Highway approval planning into the same bill is poor form. All of this is backwards steps for protection of the environment and the long-term health of our province.