As a Scarborough resident…

As a Scarborough resident who frequents downtown Toronto and North York City Centre, does not own a car (because I don't want to) and believes proteting our extremely valuable agricultural land is crucial for the province's future, I am STRONGLY opposed to bill 212.

This bill not only aims to accelerate and ease the construction of a highway, which are known for bein extremely disruptive, destructive, dangerous, and just generally bad places to be at, but also it disregards the need for public infrastracture prioritizing safer vehicles and pedestrians.

This bill disregards hundreds of thousands of people advocating for safer, pleasant and useful streets. Our streets are public domain, we have the right to use them as pedestrians, bikers and mobility-scooter users, cars have the privilige of using them, they are a guest in our street landscape but this has been lost in the last 80 years. For thousands of years we have used the streets as not only places to go through but places to go to. What makes the Danforth, Bloor, Yonge and most of downtown is the fact that they are so full of places to go to, instead of parking lots or lanes or traffic that only serve as a thoroughfare to out of city folks.

If you were really serious about the economy, you would not allow cars to dominate the transportation landscape, making it so more and more businesses need to buy parking lots or go bankrupt because not enough people live within walking or biking distance to them. Parking lots are a waste of space and money. Downtown Toronto and the City of Toronto's more walkable, mixed-used, low car areas are subdizing the suburbs, where kids are stuck in their cul-de-sacs, far away from their friends and hang-out spaces. If you were serious about caring about Ontarians and Torontonians, you wouldn't be limiting our mobility to cars, but expanding it to bikes, scooters, walking, public transit and anything else out there. It's not about limiting cars, that comes as a byproduct of giving pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders their space and priority. When you have privilige, equality feels a lot like oppression.

As an engineer and social safety advocate, this bill makes no sense, it feels like a government-controlling attempt at destroying our quality of life. This bill reads as a political move rather than a well-thought-out, well-structured, well-meaning, and sensible bill. Engineers, economists, TRAFFIC ENGINEERS, and a plethora of professionals disagree with this bill. Climate change disagrees with this bill. All the families of people who have lost their lives to a car accident disagree with this bill. This call for change is not about bikes or bike lanes, this is about enjoying our communities and bringing back common sense and science to our government.

I plead, ask and demand that this bill is dropped completely and we let each jurisdiction in our province decide what makes their streets better. I unfortunately don't think this will happen, and the misinformation that have led the automobile-centric policy of Toronto and Ontario will persist, but I still hang onto a sliver of hope that the province will make the right decision, for my future kids, my friends, my family and all my neighbours and co-citizens.

Safe streets save lives, it's just common sense.