As a resident of Toronto who…

As a resident of Toronto who does not have a car, and has used public transit for decades, I'd like to think I have a pretty good nose by now for when the Conservatives are just trying to score points with suburban voters by ignoring experts, throwing urban residents under the bus, and just going with what gives Doug Ford those feel-good driver vibes. This has a lot of nonsensical feel-good vibes to it. First off:

Bike lanes don't cause traffic. Cars cause traffic. Bike lanes are a solution to traffic, because they help people get around in other ways than in cars.

The last thing any of us should want is for people to be pushed out of safe, separated bike lanes and into street traffic, which will be the only option for many cyclists going to many destinations within the city. (This only makes sense if you irrationally hate cyclists.) More bikes on the street in regular lanes will interfere with the flow of car traffic much more than bikes in dedicated bike lanes. Destroying bike lanes, and taking away the city's control of planning and building bike lanes, will make traffic on Toronto's streets worse, not better.

There's also a real public safety issue. More bikes on the street means more collisions, and it means more cyclists will be injured or even killed. It will make cyclists less safe. By the way, cyclists are ALSO residents of Toronto, and they have a right to get around their own city in safety (again, unless one has an irrational hatred of cyclists).

If the government wants to reduce traffic, the solution is to fund the expansion of bike lanes, and trails and sidewalks for pedestrians, and to improve funding for public transit. More affordable, accessible, easy alternatives to driving a car means that many more people will use those options, reducing traffic for everyone. That would be the less fundamentally-idiotic option here, and would be a much more practical thing to spend money on than re-zoning the entire city to exclude bikes. That's just reactionary mean-spiritedness dressed up as a real solution.

It's not. It's not any kind of solution. So please, just don't.