The move to remove bike…

The move to remove bike lanes from within the city of Toronto flies in the face of the very name of the bill, as it does not address the root cause of gridlock but rather is reducing part of the solution to it.

As someone who drives through the city regularly, it would seem that the inability to efficiently come in and out of the city via our major arteries (Gardiner expressway, 401) is a major culprit for the gridlock felt within the city itself. Adding one lane of capacity for stretches of inner city streets is not going to change the fact that nothing is moving on the highways in and out. The city is currently bounded by roads that are overcapacity particularly during the current ongoing gardiner construction. Removing bike lanes within the city does not change this.

The cost to remove these bike lanes, which were recently implemented, is an additional backstep. The money could very much more productively be applied to improving our transit system within the city, improving the transit system in and out of the city of Toronto and for that matter across the province. If more people were able to easily commute in and out of the city via trains, and then get to where they needed to go via public transit, there would be less cars on the road and the very cause of the gridlock we experience would begin to be addressed. The root cause of the gridlock problem in the city is the lack of mobility provided by alternatives to the car, such as public transit of bicycles. Removing bike lanes is not the answer.

This would seemingly be common sense, something the federal conservative party touts as their mantra. Perhaps the Ontario PC's should get on board with common sense and stop making decisions based on who's pockets their hands are currently in.