Replacing bike lanes with…

Replacing bike lanes with traffic lanes would only worsen the problem. Removing bike lanes would force cyclists to get into cars, which take up more room on the roads and increase gridlock. Forcing municipalities to remove their own bike lanes would be a waste of public funds, and the extra traffic lane would hardly have an effect on congestion; it would fill up quickly. In addition, the impact on the environment is quite simple: replacing bikes with cars will only serve to harm the environment. The environmental impact of cars, in terms of air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, is so much worse than that of bicycles, that I struggle to comprehend what there could possibly be to consider about it.

Bike lanes reduce the number of cars on the road, and encourage people to take more environmentally-friendly modes of transport. This reduces congestion, allowing the remaining traffic to flow more smoothly. In cities that have well-developed bike infrastructure, such as New York and Copenhagen, this effect has already been observed. If we expand our network of bike lanes, including adding protected bike lanes, people would feel more comfortable and willing to ride bikes rather than cars. I believe that we should spend taxpayer money on making Toronto easier to navigate with a bicycle, rather than moving backwards and removing bike lanes we had built for the very purpose of reducing congestion.