Hello, I'm writing to…

Hello,

I'm writing to state my opposition to Bill 212 which proposes ripping out stretches of bike lanes along several Toronto streets, namely Bloor street. I'm a Toronto resident; I live along Bloor St. West and work on the Danforth.

The Bill suggests bike lanes congest car traffic; this is simply not true and has been refuted time and time again by numerous studies conducted in major cities all over the world.

The Bill also suggests that businesses are adversely impacted by bike lanes which is also untrue. Economic Impact Studies done by The Centre for Active Transportation in 2009, 2010, and 2017 all suggest the opposite; most customers are arriving by foot or by bike. Not by car.

In my own experience working for a small business on the Danforth for several years now; most of our customers arriving from outside the immediate neighborhood are arriving by bike or by public transit and very few by car.

When the TTC was rumored to go on strike early this year I was relieved in knowing I could bike a straight line from my doorstep at Spadina and Bloor all the way to my job on Danforth past Chester Ave. in less time it would take on the subway and save myself the $40 or so it would have costed to get an Uber.

Removing parts of these bike lanes, some only just completed within the last few years, would be costly, further congest roads already heavily burdened by construction, fly in the face of Ontario's climate commitments and would remove a valuable way of transportation for many thousands of Torontonians.

Kindly,
Renee