Removing bike lanes will not…

Removing bike lanes will not improve traffic. If anything they have and will continue to improve mobility across the city, as more people live near bike lanes for trips beyond commuting - shopping, visiting friends, going to restaurants, generally the kinds of mid range activities that we absolutely should be encouraging people to do by bike, as that would in fact reduce the number of cars on the road.

And Toronto is absolutely bike friendly in the winter, if we're as diligent about clearing snow from bike lanes as we are from roads - only a small proportion of the time is the ground completely covered in snow.

Emergency services are not impacted by bike lanes - again, the actual evidence speaks against lanes having negative effects.

The real solutions - which we need to be brave enough to implement, are removing street parking on arterials, which would anger drivers (but necessarily), and encouraging alternative modes of transportation, of which bike lanes are of course one. This will require real vision and well thought out policy making, but would offer real solutions that any government could proudly tout.