Dear Members of Provincial…

Dear Members of Provincial Parliament of the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy,

My name is x and I'm a resident of the [y] area. My family does not own a car and we rely on safe bike infrastructure in the city of Toronto to get us safely to our destination. Not having to own a car has saved us more than $10,000 a year and we rely on urban cycling as our main form of transportation.

Bill 212 with its proposal to rip out bike lanes on University, Bloor and Yonge street and to delay new bike infrastructure is going to make my and my family's commute a lot more dangerous and unreliable. In Toronto this year, we've had 6 cyclists die and just in the last 2 weeks, a 13 year old girl died riding her bike in Ajax (1) , while another woman died in Kingston riding her bike (2). Clearly there's not enough cycling infrastructure across Ontario despite the high demand for cycling across the province. It is not only people in downtown Toronto who bike, just last weekend I wrote to the Honourable Logan Kanapathico about the high demand for cycling in his region (see attached photo at the end)

Now that Bill 212 is being reviewed by you, I urge you to reconsider this regressive piece of legislation. In the age of climate change, we should be encouraging more people to seek driving alternatives, as mentioned in Ontario's climate change website (3) and make it easier to bike with safe infrastructure. Cycling is a low cost form of transportation that Ontarians like me are relying on and the Ford government, with its mantra of saving the taxpayers' money should not be making our lives more expensive.

Kind regards, My name and Contact info

Sources:

1 - https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/11/07/ajax-cyclist-struck-13-year-old-…

2 - https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/kingston-ont-woman-riding-electric-bicycle-di…

3 - https://www.ontario.ca/page/climate-change

photo - https://imgur.com/a/AuzL7Kd