As an Ontarian driver and a…

As an Ontarian driver and a cyclist, this bill is perhaps the worst possible use of our province’s limited transportation resources. There is no legitimate evidence that bike lanes meaningfully contribute to the significant congestion problem faced by our province. The fact is that consistent infrastructure failures by all level of government have forced all too many Ontarians to rely on cars to get where they need to go. Especially in Ontario’s cities, there are simply too many of us living together for us to try to solve this problem by building more road infrastructure, at least if we hope that our communities will remain places where Ontarians want to live and grow together. We need more public transport, more walkable hubs, and more cycling infrastructure, not more ways to let people sit alone in their metal boxes. Besides hurting our communities, putting our chips on road infrastructure will only make congestion worse and will hamper Ontario’s economic competitiveness in many ways—wasting hours of our time as we sit on the road when we could have been working or spending time with our families, and making our communities less attractive places to live for international talent.

It is mind-boggling that the provincial government’s response to Ontario’s very real transportation crisis is to insert more bureaucratic obstacles for communities seeking to improve their transportation networks. The province does not have the expertise or any business interfering in intensely local street-by-street transportation decisions. If this bill is passed, planning will be more expensive, and the outcomes will be worse for those who have to live with the results. For similar reasons, both because it is unlikely to materially, sustainably improve the congestion issue, and because it will make the city a worse place to live, the provincial government should not usurp local decision-making and waste resources money tearing up existing cycling infrastructure in Toronto.