For several reasons, I am…

For several reasons, I am absolutely NOT in favour of your plan to restrict bike lanes. I will voice some of the concerns that the other commenters probably don't mention as much.

ABOUT SIDE STREETS: your government keeps talking about putting bike lanes on side streets. However, your proposed additions to the HTA mention nothing about giving any exception for streets with low traffic volume or streets that are designated as local or minor. This act, contrary to what Premier Ford has stated, would still prohibit bike lanes on side streets, and that's a problem because those streets only get congested because of unnecessary traffic signals and stop signs causing backups and limiting flow.

Even of more bike lanes are constructed on side streets, it would make the route highly circuitous, discontinuous and difficult to follow because there just aren't many side streets that don't curve and end abruptly. This would become a fatal flaw of the bike network.

Your claim that only a few cyclists use the bike lanes is frankly ludicrous. As a university student who resides in the City of Ottawa, I have observed that a bike network that are separated and well-connected will attract many, many cyclists. The bike lanes along Mackenzie Ave and the surrounding area are a great example of this. Of course, you won't notice most them when you're in car, but you will when you just go outside and take a look at what's really out there. Montreal, which has a much more extensive bike network, is an even better example, look at this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F_B0HtewDU).

You can't judge the need to build a bridge by counting the number of people who try to swim across a river. People will claim that only five or so people cycle on a given road per year (which is already a false and infantile claim to make), but surveys taken by cities show that the major reason for that is NOT LACK OF INTEREST, NOT WINTER, but instead PERSONAL SAFETY. In addition, cycling routes are only as good as their weakest point, which is why we need CONNECTED bike infrastructure. Effective bicycle routes should have less breaks and interruptions and should definitely not be difficult to get to in the first place. Your legislation will make that approach very difficult, sometimes impossible. As a university student, I found that the network was quite disconnected and hard to navigate because of the all the gaps in between, and I am concerned that your legislation will prevent the city from being able to fix those.

Congestion you say? That's not because there are two vehicle lanes instead of three. If you add another lane to a road that currently has two lanes of stopped traffic, you get three lanes of stopped traffic. The problem is that you are unwilling to look outside the box and find alternatives to placing excessive amounts of traffic signals and stop signs on arterials and collector roads, which have been considered the traditional approach to fixing traffic. It is not because of the bike lanes.