The requirement for…

The requirement for provincial approval for city bike lanes is a governmental overreach, and it creates unnecessary red tape. It's city officials, not the province, who know best what the traffic patterns are like at the city level, and what it takes to help people get to and from work, school, and patronizing local businesses. As a taxpayer both at the Ontario level and at the municipal level, I am abhorred at this proposal to have my tax dollars be used for evaluating the same thing (whether a bike lane should exist) at two different levels, and I urge the Province to drop this unnecessarily Big Government proposal, and instead focus on passing legislation that would benefit the entire province, for things that would make sense at a provincial level.

Furthermore, cars cause gridlock, not bikes. I choose to not own a car because I don't want to contribute to the gridlock problem, or to the increasing costs of road maintenance from car traffic. I am currently in a city where I can bike safely to the farmer's market, to local mom-and-pop shops in the central business area, to entertainment venues. On a safe and segregated path where I am not competing with cars, I can pay more attention to what new shops have popped up and that I could check out.

Dedicated bike paths lets me support local businesses that, in turn, pay taxes to Ontario. The vast majority of my non-essential spending (shopping, eating out, entertainment) is done by bike or on foot. When I can't get to those places easily, I would switch to online ordering from big international corporations that don't pay their fair share of taxes to Canada and Ontario--this means less revenue for the Province, as well as increased gridlock from delivery vehicles.

Bill 212 would end up doing the opposite of the original intention. It would cause more gridlock (more people forced off their bikes and have to drive, more trips by delivery trucks), hurt local businesses that rely on their neighbours' patronage, and drive up the cost of running the province through creating more red tape.

Let's make Ontario a place to grow by giving people options on how they want to get around, and by giving cities the freedom to decide how best to advance their local economy. We really don't need this extra Big Government intervention.