I strongly oppose the…

I strongly oppose the measures removing and preventing the addition of cycling infrastructure. There’s been no sign of any plan to make a non arterial cycling network that connects up, and I have had a lot of experience with trying to make that work, and I’ve done my homework. It sounds great until you look at a map, basically. And where it does work, we’re already doing it. These provisions aren’t going to help drivers in the long run. They’re just going to lead to more congestion. You could do a bunch of property expropriation and build a bunch of special bridges and tunnels to make a side street network happen, like we did when putting together the driving network, but I doubt that any of that is the plan. The plan seems to be to keep referencing a connected network of side streets that doesn’t exist. Awhile ago I put together who I called a “hybrid” network concept for connecting our suburban side streets, minimizing changes to driving space and arterial roads, basically by running cycletracks through our arterial crossings of rail lines, ravines, highways etc, all the choke points where the main arterials are the only route. It’s only viable in the suburbs, it only works in some places, and the places that it would allow us to not put cycletracks are places where the arterials have lots of extra capacity anyway. And I don’t think that’s something that you’d consider. There’s lots of reasons not to build cycling infrastructure and it’s all bad faith arguments. They’re simple common sense sounding things but they’re lies, in the end, which are quicker to say than the corresponding truths that debunk them. But the important piece is, our slow build out of cycling infrastructure has given us an awkward transitional phase where every new piece is underused until it gets connected up, and drivers have less space to work with even as they’re going past bits of cycletrack that don’t take them all the way they need to go. That’s what my coworker is dealing with. He’s ready to switch from driving to cycling, and just needs the remaining ten percent of his commuting route to be fixed. It’s totally congested, without cycling infrastructure, and that congestion is going to continue to be used as an excuse not to build that infrastructure. Meanwhile the only benefit in the situation goes to the car and oil companies. And that’s who this act is designed to benefit, in my opinion. It’s not about helping drivers, it’s about using our road system as an auto industry marketing tool. And that’s a shameful practice that has endured long enough now. Cars are great and driving is great, except when it’s compulsory. And people are sick of being forced to drive. That’s the only thing I really hated about owning a car. All the trips that would have been better as bike rides, but that I had to use my car for. It made me hate being a driver. Because I was either one of the extra drivers who’d rather be cycling, or I was stuck in traffic with a bunch of the other extra drivers, or both. Anyway, I’ve linked the video I made about the hybrid network concept, so you can see why the city decided not to pursue it. Or maybe you’ll go for it and do flyovers and bridges in place of the cycletracks. But that’s the closest you’ll see to something that avoids removing driving space from arterials. Good luck.