I would hope the…

I would hope the environmental review encompasses not just the direct traffic impacts of the bike lanes, but the broader negative community impacts beyond Bloor. The installation of bike lanes has become ideologically driven, without a rigorous assessment of their consequences. It has also become an ageism attack: if you are not able to ride a bicycle, you are not a part of the population. Despite the reality that the >65 yrs cohort is one of the fastest growing. At 88, I am part of a small minority still riding a bicycle, no longer on the roadways, but on the park trails.

But even in the parks, the cycling lobby is having adverse effects, especially for the elderly:
e.g. Restricted vehicle access to High Park has now made it difficult to transport my bike to the park. Similarily for young families wanting to use the park trails as a safe learning environment for young cyclists. Meanwhile, once within the park, road bikes, electrified bikes and scooters drive at high speeds, endangering casual bikers, pedestrians, and dog walkers, and broadly ignore the rules of the road, as they also do when driving in the bike lanes

Despite the extensive Bloor West bike lanes, and especially in inclement weather, the bikers and gig deliverers migrate to the subway transit. They are often the cause of queuing at the elevators intended for the disabled, aged and child strollers. Generally, a single bike takes over the total capacity of an elevator. Once on the train they congregate adjacent to the doors, causing a further obstruction for pedestrians and family strollers.

The Bloor West bike lane extension has cut the vehicle throughput capacity in half, 4 vehicle lanes are now reduced to 2. The aritmetic is fairly simple. Why is bumper to bumper congestion a surprise? It would seem to be a deliberate tactic to discourage people from driving, in effect to force them out of their cars.

Beyond the direct local impact, which includes difficulties in accessing Bloor from the intersecting residential streets, ie getting into the grid-locked stream, the Bloor bike lanes impediment has, again quite predictably, diverted cars onto the narrower residential streets from the arterial road. It is hard to see this being a community safety advantage.

As a result of the bike lane installations on Bloor, traffic is also rerouting from Bloor St W to the next arterials that cross the Humber River: The Queensway to the south and to Dundas St. W. to the north.

The resulting bumper-to bumper congestion on Dundas West from Royal York Road/Prince Edward Drive east to Scarlett Road is especially slow in the eastbound evening traffic. Having driven and inspected that spectacle several times, it has become clear a major contributing factor is the traffic queing to turn left on Dundas and go north at Scarlett Road. Looking futher, that flow is being blocked by the bike lanes installed on Scarlett Road, now reduced to 2 lanes from 4. Surely the simplest of computer models would have predicted this, let alone common sense.

Finally, I would refer to a direct personal impact on us: the removal of the Bloor bus stop (Prince Edward Dr South route) at Kingsmill Road. With one vehicle lane removed for bike lanes, and no bus bays, a bus stopping would have halted all traffic. We previously used that bus to travel from Old Mill Station along Bloor to within 2 blocks of our home. It is now ~ 0.9 km between the two nearest Bloor bus stops ( at The Kingsway and at Prince Edward Drive, respectively). To add to the absurdity, the former resting bench at Kingsmill has been removed, and a large rack of commercial rental bikes installed in its place. The suggestion seems to be that when westbound we rent a bike at Old Mill Station, and ride up the Humber Valley/Bloor hill to Kingsmill. I doubt that ours is a unique consequence. Your study should examine how many other pedestrian/transit-friendly bus stops have been removed. When I raised this issue with a biking activist, the reply was, "Tough, not everybody wins." Ageism!