Hi I am writing to provide…

Hi I am writing to provide my feedback as a long time car driver and cyclist. I am speaking from my personal experience having cycle-commuted 3 years (more than 18,000kms) in Toronto and as a driver who drove often between cities in Ontario (20,000kms per year).

I fully disagree with the proposal to remove bike lanes if it resulted in a lane reduction for cars. Having heard this proposal, I cannot believe the Ontario government can be such backwards thinking and has the audacity to propose a bill that will waste my taxpayer money on undo-ing the good work that cities have done in encouraging healthier and more sustainable means of transportation.

Having been stuck in traffic congestion for many of my driving kilometers, the issues are not because we are having bike lanes. Highway congestions are due to the large amount of users (I am aware that myself is a driver on the road and adds to the congestion), accidents caused by reckless driving, constructions and road closures. These can be resolved by:

1. building more transit for people to NOT use cars as a primary mean of transportation to get to places. When transit takes longer than driving, it is easy to see why people would choose to drive their cars. We need to invest in public transit that is reliable and high frequency, instead of spending the money uselessly removing bike lanes which will not help with relieving congestion.

2. better enforcement in policing bad driving behaviour. A reckless driver that caused an accident on the highway resulting in road closures impact thousands getting stuck in traffic. We need to enforce the traffic rules and promote better driving that prevents accidents causing road closures.

3. constructions and road closures need to be planned out carefully to reduce the impact during rush hours. Often times lanes are closed without construction happening, or slow progress on construction causes congestion impacting commute time.

When bike lanes are removed from cities, it WILL kill people. As a government for people, I thought the Ontario government would care about this fact. Bike lanes make commute safer, promotes more people using them, and avoiding a lot of conflict points with drivers that can be inattentive and careless. Having bike commuted myself, I had so many close calls when biking on the road with other drivers, because they are not aware that when there is no bike lane, we will have to take the road because at the end of the day, we have to get to places. I was happy to see that the city of Toronto has added so many bike lanes in the past 5 years, and cycling has become safer and more accessible for people, but the work is not done yet - there NEEDS to be more CONTINUOUS bike lanes, even if it takes up a driving lane (yes, I said it as a driver myself!).

Driving is a privilege, NOT an entitlement. Being comfortable in a car, being able to afford a car does not give you the rights to think that you are a more superior being than a pedestrian or a cyclist. We need to SHARE the rights of mobility, and by sharing, means equality in terms of safety. What gives the Ontario government the right to remove bicycle lanes that move so many people in the city from places to places, just to keep on-street parking that takes up even more space while moving zero people when the car is parked? Why don't we start by banning on-street parking to free up another lane of traffic in big cities like Toronto?

With the Bloor St project, Yonge St, and King St, these city studies have shown that the local business was not impacted by the reduction of car lanes, but in fact, has promoted more spending. Even most customers who arrived on those places do not arrive on car.

I strongly urge the government to embrace urban transportation and transit planning design and do NOT pass this bill. Biking and better transit planning are the solutions to the car congestion; we need to get more people out of their car driving from places to places to reduce congestion, not encouraging as that induces more demand and caused more congestion in the future.

Thank you.