As someone who now commutes…

As someone who now commutes by bike most days, I find this this Bill completely out of touch with reality and threatening to every citizen’s ability to choose their preferred mode of transportation in this province. I have made the choice to not own a car because Toronto does offer me other alternatives. After studying and traveling across Europe and Japan, I can attest that there can and there should always be more than less traveling alternatives. At the very least, it is possible to travel around without a car in Toronto. The situation could be far better though.

Bikes offer the opportunity to travel without a car but with the same time flexibility that a car procures, in addition to help protecting the environment by limiting the use of fossil fuels. Plus, the more cyclist there are on the roads, the less drivers there will be (therefore limiting the number of vehicles on the roads and congestion). It’s that simple. Furthermore, car infrastructure has for decades occupied a vast majority of the public space in Toronto’s streets and a lot of North American cities. And traffic has shown no signs of slowing down in recent years.

One only needs to look at the map on the Bike Share Toronto application to realize that a vast majority of streets don’t yet have bike infrastructure. One must be creative to find a route that will allow them to get to their destination quickly and safely. On the main biking routes targeted by the Ontario government and Bill 212 (Bloor Street, Yonge Street, University Avenue), the bike lanes have given citizens like me the option to travel by bike in a quicker and safer way. Every day, on my way to work, I see dozens of cyclists on these paths. The more interconnected the biking network becomes, the more regular people like me will want to use it, as proven by the rising number of people biking since their implementation (from 665,000 in 2015 up to 5.7 million trips in 2023 - statistics from Bike Share Toronto).

Feeling safe whilst cycling is one of the key elements that will convince people to bike or not. This bill is not only going to bring out city backwards - it will force bikers (including food delivery workers) to travel in dangerous conditions and in an environment that is unwelcoming to anything but motorized vehicles. Please reconsider any decision in regards to the dismantlement of these bike lanes and the implementation of new bike lanes in our cities, which we desperately need to reduce our car dependency.