The existence of bike lanes…

The existence of bike lanes provide a safe and reliable mode of transportation for both cyclists and drivers. Being able to easily replace car lanes with bike lanes will increase the quality of life for all residents as bikes produce less pollution (noise, emission and light) and encourage healthier and safer communities.

When bike lanes are built they have been demonstrated to shift demand away from cars towards greener modes of transportation. Having more cyclists leads secondary benefits such as having healthier population and reducing the strain on our health care system. Additionally bike lanes do not impact emergency service response times and require less maintenance than car lanes.

Removing bike lanes of in favor of more car lanes will not improve traffic due to induced demand. Removing bike lanes to widen existing car lanes will make streets more dangerous as cars tend to drive faster on wider lanes. Both of these approaches will make streets more dangerous for and pedestrians.

Going forward Ontario should be making it easier to build bike lanes, not more difficult. Everyone benefits from a larger portion of the population travelling by bike.