This proposal makes very…

This proposal makes very little sense to me. I do not understand how replacing lanes on local roads to provide a safe, reliable, and fast form of non-automobile transit could in any way increase traffic. The roads on which bike lanes are being implemented are not effective arterials in the first place.

Further, bike lanes are shown to take cars off the road as people switch to biking for more trips. The only way to reduce congestion is to take people from cars to other modes of transit. It is well established that adding lanes or roads induces demand, providing at best a 3 year respite from traffic. Bike infrastructure and transit can reduce demand. If the bike lanes around me were removed, I would start driving more regularly—increasing traffic.

I understand that the goal of this proposal is not to help mobility in urban or inner-suburban communities where bikes make sense for local trips, but rather for deep suburban commuters. However, even if removing bike lanes could increase traffic flow into the downtown core, where would the cars park? There simply is no space in the downtown core for more cars. Increasing car traffic into the downtown will make traffic worse, decrease quality of life, make the downtown far more dangerous, and make driving far less pleasant forcing drivers to spend hours searching for parking or paying out of their nose.

I urge the government to consider fact-based policies which can actually increase commute speeds. This means getting
people out of cars and onto other modes of transport. Consider projects like elevated rail along the 401 with regularly spaced park-and-rides, or a direct rail connection between Mississauga and Toronto downtowns. Building more roads simply creates more traffic, people need to switch modes if we want to reduce traffic. It also is well demonstrated that fewer lanes frequently have faster traffic flow than more lanes—consider the massive success of reducing arterial roads to one lane each way in Paris.

I hope the government reconsiders this poorly thought through proposal.