I am a resident, parent and…

I am a resident, parent and Architect who is a homeowner/business owner in Toronto. I am against: any limiting addition of; or removal of existing bike lanes. I have lived in Toronto for almost twenty years. As a student at Ryerson University, biking around was the only form of transportation I could afford, even public transit was a lot to pay for, so I biked 12 months of the year. At the time I biked in blizzards, rain, sun, extreme wind, it didn't matter. There were no protected bike lanes to protect me from cars. Even though I'm a very defensive biker who keeps an eye on cars all the time, there were a lot of near misses from passing cars that could have ended my life. We have come a long way since then (although still a long way to go), and the number of bikers in the city has increased exponentially as bike lanes have been installed. I feel much safer now biking, but there is a lot more work to do to make Toronto a city that is safe to get around through public transit and active transportation like biking and walking (the bonus is public transit and bike infrastructure is cheaper, and it alleviates some of the health care costs in ontario as it leads to healthier people) . Please stop this bill from going through, it is based in mis-information and skewing of information (such as the stats of the percentage of people who commute by bike, which includes huge swaths of the city where public transit is poor and bike infrastructure is non-existant and people are forced to drive cars; or studies that were completed during the pandemic with inconsistent bike/car numbers). Everyone I know downtown Toronto Bikes at least some of the time to get around recreationally and many commute to work and job sites by bike. I have a family and we want to feel safe biking with our kids, on bike lanes this is possible, when biking on the road, it is not. Also, the approach to put bike lanes on secondary streets with a stop-light every block does not work. They tried this in some locations in Vancouver (Kitsilano) and I never used them as it would take twice as long to get somewhere then using the main street (bikers are trying to get somewhere efficiently and in a timely manner). We also have a car, but we bike 90% of the time and mostly use the car to get out of Toronto to go visit family or on vacations. As an Architect, I bike to construction sites, client meetings most of the year, and take public transit to most of those in bad weather.