This Bill will not reduce…

This Bill will not reduce gridlock. The only solution to congestion and gridlock is viable alternatives to car driving (of which bike lanes are one alternative).

Induced demand is an already established fact in the transportation planning. When you build more lanes (or build more parking), more people are encouraged to drive.

Induced demand is when the supply of a good is increased which reduces the cost of the good and encourages (induces) more people to use the good. When cities and provinces add more roads, highways, car lanes, and car interchanges, the costs to driving are initially reduced (Hymel 2019, Mann 2014). These costs to driving usually take the form of reduced time for getting around by car. However, people are encouraged to drive and roads are then returned to their previously congested state (but now with higher infrastructure maintenance costs). Induced demand also occurs when new roads encourage new housing and business development. These developments are usually centred around cars, further exacerbating congestion (Hymel 2019, Mann 2014).

Induced demand also works for other transportation modes including bicycling. When bicycling becomes safe and easy (usually because protected bike lanes have been added), more people will choose to bicycle over driving.

Another key point is the geometry of cars versus bikes (Will, Cornet, & Munshi 2020). Cars are very large and usually carry one person. Bikes on the other hand are highly space efficient. Consequently, bike lanes can move many more people per square meter than car lanes (Will, Cornet, & Munshi 2020). That is how you reduce gridlock by moving more people per square meter.

To reiterate, this bill will make gridlock worse, not better. This bill should be retracted. Instead, we need to build more protected bike lanes and add bus rapid transit lanes (along with improving intercity and within city public transit).

Sources:
Hymel, K. 2019. If you build it, they will drive: Measuring induced demand for vehicle travel in urban areas. Transport Policy, 76:57-66.
Mann, A. 2014. What's Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse. Wired.
Will, M.-E., Cornet, Y., & Munshi, T. 2020. Measuring road space consumption by transport modes: Toward a standard spatial efficiency assessment method and an application to the development scenarios of Rajkot City, India. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 13(1), 651–669.