I am concerned about the…

I am concerned about the secondary effects of restricting and removing cycle lanes in Toronto. As we face a future of economic challenges, as we have an aging population with the attendant challenges of health care delivery, removing bike lanes from Toronto streets sends a strong message, both practical and symbolic, in favour of a high consumption, sedentary lifestyle. We see and feel the results in this province: high debt and low savings, an already stretched healthcare system burdened by preventable cases of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart attack and stroke, and more.

Bike lanes, by themselves, barely move the needle on all these problems, but they do move it in the right direction. It should surprise nobody that facilities and policies that make cycling for transportation easier and safer lead to an increase in cycling. Forcing a reversal of these measures risks causing a reduction in cycling. This is particularly true of the proposed legislation, which makes absolutely no provision for the safety of cyclists or indeed any other road users. Not only that, it will promote the primacy of the single passenger automobile in Toronto’s transportation mix. This will have significant harmful effects on our city, our economy, and on our health and healthcare system.

I understand the feelings of many people in this province who take their use of the personal automobile as a right. I have no desire to restrict their choice of transport, except where necessary to permit others to make healthier and more economical choices without sacrificing their personal safety. I can easily imaging a different version of this bill, one focused on the efficient design of bike lanes so as to avoid removing lanes for moving vehicles, or measures to promote the safe integration of human powered vehicles into the traffic mix through effective enforcement of traffic laws affecting safety. This bill does none of those things.

Possible measures to reduce urban gridlock without compromising safety for vulnerable road users include:

1) Amending the Highway Traffic Act to permit any individual to lay an information under the act on the basis of testimony or attested video,

2) Specifically prohibiting of the use of motor vehicles to harass or threaten other road users,

3) Enhancing security for driving licenses so as to effectively enforce license suspensions and revocations,

4) Upgrading standards for licensing and examinations,

5) Providing for the graduated reduction in driving privileges for those convicted of Highway Traffic Act offences, in a mirror image of similar to the current graduated licensing process.

Measures to prevent bike lanes from adding to gridlock could include design standards that make the provision of moving vehicle lanes a priority over on-street parking, and restrict the practice of using vehicle parking as a barrier to protect bike lanes.

All these measures aim at promoting road safety while reducing gridlock, either by promoting more efficient design for bike lanes or by making sharing the road safer for vulnerable road users. I strongly urge the government to change this bill to include the effective promotion of road safety.