I would like to urge the…

I would like to urge the government, in the strongest terms possible, to either withdraw Bill 212, or to amend it so it prioritizes actions that will truly reduce congestion, such as improving transit and adding MORE cycling lanes to encourage fewer people to use cars.

The bill proceeds from a false assumption that cycling lanes have cause the congestion that currently plagues Toronto and other cities in the province. In my own neighborhood or Beaches East York, a recently installed bike lane was found to add, at most, a minute to travel times in the neighborhood. Additionally, the bike lanes have proven popular with locals.

Personally, I truly appreciate the bike lanes as a way of keeping my family safe. We are a family of cyclists, and before the installation of the Danforth bike lanes, biking on the Danforth was an extremely dangerous proposition. Knowing that my family can use the bike lanes gives me enormous peace of mind.

Bike lanes are also a way of siphoning more cars off the road. My husband works in downtown Toronto, and in all but a few months of the year he bikes to work. He finds biking not only faster than transit, but much faster than driving.

The government is also acting with inaccurate information. The Premier has stated that only 1% of people commute to work using a bike, but has used old and inaccurate statistics. As the article I linked to below shows, in neighborhoods with good biking infrastructure, between 7% and 16% of people commute using bikes. Getting that many people out of cars doesn't make traffic worse; it drastically improves it.

I also strenuously object to the provincial government overturning decisions made by our democratically elected local representatives who have a far more nuanced view of the needs of the city.

And finally, from a strictly financial perspective, I find it obscene that the provincial government is willing to spend an estimated $48 million dollars to rip out infrastructure that already cost tens of millions of dollars to install. It is an incredibly wasteful use of taxpayers' money from a government that claims to abhor waste.

I hope you will either kill this bill, or revises it to take action that will truly help traffic congestion and encourage cycling in our city, improve transit, and discourage more cars from using our already crowded street.