As someone who voted for PC…

As someone who voted for PC in the previous election, I am EXTREMELY disappointed with this Bill.

1. This adds governmental red tape and additional bureaucracy, which is the last thing we should ever want to see from government.

2. This is a top-down heavy-handed authoritarian socialist-engineering approach coming from the Provincial legislation to control municipal planning, transportation mobility, and micro-manage municipal and local affairs. I did not elect the PC government to have them govern like the CCP.

3. Cycling infrastructure provides essential transportation for a whole range of road users for a whole range of travel uses that ultimately increases economic productivity and encourages the return to the office, increased shopping on streets like Bloor, more spend in downtown restaurant establishments, trips to sports games, and enhances the overall vibrancy, vitality, and prosperity of the city.

4. These cycling lanes creates a basic standard of safety that reduces the opportunity for cyclist-automobile conflicts and encourages a greater number of people to bike without feeling vulnerable and unsafe on city streets. Conversely, removing these lanes will encourage cyclists to become drivers, increasing congestion on downtown streets for the same commuting patterns.

5. As a driver, it is much better for everyone on the road to not have cyclists clog up car traffic lanes creating undue traffic, interact with automobile traffic with uncertain movements, and to be in the cycling lane where I know they are. Bringing them back to the traffic lanes is a disaster.

6. Bike lanes support the other transit investments made in the city and personally save me time and money on my commute to work. It currently takes 20 minutes to cycle to work (specifically on the Bloor bike lane) whereas it takes me 40 minutes to drive (plus I must pay for parking downtown) and 45 minutes by public transit on the TTC. When you add up these differences in commuting time and saved costs from not parking and driving, it adds up to a lot more than the $200 cheque we are slated to receive.

7. Needless to say, but this Bill 212 also contradicts EVERY research study done on the impacts of cycling infrastructure on the built environment, which overwhelmingly demonstrate that cycling infrastructure reduces congestion, enhances safety, and promotes local businesses. We will become a less productive City and Province should this Bill 212 move forward.

Please know that this social-engineering red-tape introducing Bill 212 will place the Ontario PC on the wrong side of history on the same side of other disastrous social-engineers of the past century.