Please stop this proposal to…

Please stop this proposal to remove bike lanes for six reasons:

1) I'm against provincial interference into municipal traffic management. If the residents in a city have given a mandate to their municipal government to control traffic on city roads, I don't want an un-knowing, distant politician (in either provincial or federal government) to tell us what we want. The Federal conservatives have demonstrated the impact of this kind of interference when John Baird stopped the Siemens contact from being implemented, so Ottawa had had a lousy tunnel to nowhere, and we had to resort to a third rate train supplier, many years later than we wanted.

2) Ontario's Provincial government is not even doing it's own job well. I don't want it to waste resources doing our municipal government's job poorly.

Stop this nonsense and do YOUR job! Get back to focusing on policies that are Ontario's responsibilities: provide us with doctors, hospitals and medical care; educate our kids from daycare through college and universities; support construction of mass transportation and inter-city rail; support green/nuclear electricity and build infrastructure for electric vehicles; attract manufacturing, and more.

3). Biking and walking (and reduced driving) should be promoted. It makes Ontario residents healthier, and reduces their need for health care, ultimately benefiting Ontario's by reducing reliance on health care and ultimately improves our fiscal situation.

4). Bikes (and reduced vehicle usage) improves air quality and breathability in the downtown core.

5) Bikes reduce pollution, ultimately contribute to our carbon reduction goal to reduce the impact of climate change.

6.) This proposal appears to have been pulled from thin air, without much thought. Were other alternatives to improve downtown traffic considered by a panel of experts? A really good alternative could be for Municipal government's to charge a premium for car use in the downtown core, to reduce congestion, improve safety of pedestrians and to improve air quality. This extra revenue could be used to provide FREE use of bus/train throughout the downtown core. Tourists and commercial vehicles could be given exceptions. Politicians (like you guys) don't need to drive downtown, should take transit! (If you don't like transit, see item 2 above, and help to improve it!!)