The Ontario Governments…

The Ontario Governments proposal to alleviate gridlock in Ontario towns and cities by controlling not just when and where a bicycle lane is built on municipal roads, but that existing, successful bicycle lane infrastructure be removed is flawed, regressive, dangerous and stupid.

Firstly, data. The conservative governments claims that bicycle infrastructure negatively affects the movement of emergency vehicles is flawed and false. Data from emergency responders tracking response travel times on routes before and after the installation of bicycle infrastructure shows, at worst, a negligible affect and, at best, a beneficial effect. Correlating any perceived negative affect to the presence of a bicycle lane, whether people are obviously using it or not, is both moot and spurious.

An additional point of data that is also frequently brought up is that bicycle lanes are bad for local businesses: where will people park if not right in front of the store they're trying to go to? This is a legitimate concern for business owners on busy streets where the street parking may be reduced to make way for bicycle infrastructure, and one where the only promise planners can make is a "wait-and-see" approach to how their business will be affected. This is a real risk. However, studies from business associations across North America and in Europe on affected areas that are built densely enough largely show increases in business transactions, dollars earned and local taxes earned.

Second, towns and cities exist to maximize human-human interactions and commerce. Streets and roads comprise the largest amount of land collectively held by the public in any town or city. Congestion is not a bad thing inherently - it shows you that a city is alive and well. However, for the past 70 years we have seen more and more of this civic infrastructure be used exclusively by cars that get larger and faster, in turn taking up more and more space for their safe movement and storage at the expense of all else. There is a diminishing return on this agreement. Cars do have an economy of their own, but in no way do cars alone facilitate or maximize the commerce of a city, or increase the human-human interactions within it. By giving the automobile more city space in the name of commerce, but at the actual expense of it is foolish and wishful - this is costing our cities, and even some of our towns. Further, to give more urban space to the automobile at the expense of human-human interactions is wrong and regressive. As was mentioned above, commerce increases when people are not in their cars, when they are moving at human speeds they can easily and safely stop on their bicycle or on foot to enter a business or chat with a friend. When we can do this, human-human interactions increase, which is of net psycho-social benefit. We need to move people and goods using as many modes as we safely can as efficiently as we can. Giving more of the road to single occupancy vehicles moves in the opposite direction.

Third, safety. While people can and do fall off bicycles, and it can be catastrophic when they do, they are a fairly safe and exceedingly efficient means of moving around. They take up very little space and require few calories to operate and have low lifetime CO2e and zero toxic emissions when in motion. Because they are human powered and because they facilitate human-human interactions they also have an added benefit of increasing our physical and psychological health. This has a further net benefit to society of decreasing the costs and demands on our public healthcare system and maximizing human potential for commerce. People can work when they're healthy and happy. It has the added benefit of allowing those who typically would not be able to use an automobile to also move around a city: those who cannot drive, the elderly, and children. There is an enormous amount of congestion that comes from parents driving their children to local activities that they should otherwise be able to cycle to, but do not. Ironically, this is because parents (and kids) perceive the roads to be too dangerous with the very vehicular traffic they are contributing to. By effectively disabling this group of citizens - kids, seniors, and those of us who have mobility issues to begin with, we rob them of their own agency and autonomy. That also has a societal cost. What makes cycling dangerous is not the activity but the environment in which it is practiced. Mixing heavy, fast moving vehicles, in which the driver is often cocooned, careless and unaware of their surroundings, with cyclists and pedestrians creates a dangerous condition. This is why we have bicycle lanes in the first place. Furthermore, because cars and trucks are heavy and hard on our public roadways, the road surface is not always safe for cyclists and can cause accidents directly - hit a pothole - or indirectly - dodged a pothole, entered vehicle traffic and were hit by an unaware driver.

Perhaps the upfront costs of constructing dedicated bicycle lanes are expensive, but their maintenance compared to vehicular roads is not, and their net benefit to society probably exceeds that initial cost several fold. Add to that the benefits of maximizing commerce and human interactions, creating a quieter, healthier environment, which automobiles, at least in dense urban environments, do not do, and it seems utterly foolish to invest more in one and not the other.

Lastly, this is simply stupid legislation produced, in typical fashion, by a stupid government lead by a stupid Premier. They're blaming of bicycle lanes for the state of gridlock in southern Ontario towns and cities demonstrates shallow thinking and a knee-jerk reaction by a lazy incompetent leadership seeking to politicize every issue rather than simply doing what's best for the society they are supposed to be stewards of. There are myriad other factors that contribute more to the increasing congestion experienced in the last two decades than the mere addition of bicycle lanes: astonishing population growth, sub-urban and rural sprawl, inept urban planning, antiquated traffic signaling, slow uptake and poor adaptation of round-abouts that would otherwise keep traffic moving, poor license requirements by vehicle users resulting in the largely abysmal quality of drivers in Ontario, incredible public subsidization of private vehicle use, complete lack of commensurate investment in truly usable public transit and literally ANY other means of moving people around besides an automobile, et cet era. At it simplest, limiting construction of new bicycle lanes - and removing existing successful ones - will only push more people into vehicles and it will cost us all dearly.

The solution to too much vehicle congestion in southern Ontario will not be more vehicle congestion.