Hello, I would like to start…

Hello,

I would like to start by stating my overall support for measures that reduce traffic and gridlock, particularly in the denser areas of our cities. However, I find this proposal to be counter to that motive and thus would like to express my concern.

Firstly, as a happy suburbanite working a sedentary job in the downtown core of Ottawa, I would dearly appreciate the opportunity to bike to work. My one attempt nearly had me run-over, and I have not tried again. Since then, I have looked to the City of Ottawa's plans for added bike lanes with excitement, hoping that I will soon be able to incorporate exercise into my commute instead of actively damaging my health sitting in a car for as much as 2 hours a day. Many of my colleagues have expressed similar hopes, even of biking in the winter!

Secondly, the rising cost of living makes biking more attractive for its lower cost of ownership. A bike costs a fraction of what a car does, and requires much less maintenance to boot. Infrastructurally, they also require much less road space and thus, presumably easier to support than large, heavy cars.

Thirdly, are we not facing a shortage of medical personnel? Have we not been told that exercise improves health outcomes, increases productivity, and reduces the need for doctors' visits? Why make it more difficult for people to get the exercise that they need and reduce the amount of effort needed to improve our doctor situation? If anything, I would have expected a push towards active transportation.

Lastly, I would like to say that bike lanes, like roads, derive much of their benefit from network effects: they become exponentially more useful and usable the more interconnected they are. As it stands, they are relatively sparse outside of our downtown cores and so one expects to see improving ridership as more are added and people feel safer riding instead of driving. Certainly, I am among that number. This proposal would actively reduce the number of bike lanes and thus hamper the network effects we want to see.

I appreciate that the problem of gridlock is difficult to solve, and that there are many factors that make it easier to restore what we used to have, but I think that this is the wrong approach.

Yours faithfully