As a taxpayer of Ontario, I…

As a taxpayer of Ontario, I support efficient bureaucracy and reasonable spending to achieve our aims of getting people where they need to go. This bill does neither of those things. It introduces added red tape into a municipal process by requiring bike lanes to need an additional level of government sign-off. If people in municipalities are unhappy with bike lane implementation, they can choose different representatives at the municipal level; there is no need for provincial meddling. Furthermore, the bill proposes to remove bike lanes in Toronto and Premier Ford has said that the province will pay for this. Again, as a taxpayer, this is an egregious waste of money.

Beyond my concerns as a taxpayer, the premise that bike lanes increase congestion has been shown over and over not to be true. Cars create congestion. There is simply not enough space in our cities to have everyone drive and still have a city left to drive to. There have been numerous studies on this effect; a synopsis of this research is linked. The only way to decrease congestion is to have fewer people drive. Bike lanes support this. In fact, between 2021 and 2022 the most congested cities in the world increased their level of congestion considerably. The only exception of Paris, which had recently started an ambitious plan to bring in more bike lanes. In contrast, Toronto congestion increased 59% between those 2 years (see link for report).

If the Ford government is concerned with congestion, it should also consider other ways to discourage driving. These include building better public transit and putting tolls on roads. Note that the 407 is rarely busy. If Toronto created tolls for the 401 or to come into the center of the city, we could actually reduce congestion. The money from such a charge could help to fund better transit: a win-win.

Traffic and congestion are solvable and well-studied problems, but more space for cars is not a viable solution. Scrap this bill.