This proposed bill is…

This proposed bill is fundamentally nonsensical.

Congestion on Toronto’s streets will not be solved by removing existing and blocking new active transportation options. Bike lanes have proven to be extremely popular wherever they’ve been installed. Making cycling safer and easier incentivizes more people to do so, reducing demand on both public transportation and automobiles. They have also not been found to significantly reduce vehicular travel speed, reducing travel times only by minutes on average.

The benefits of bike lanes aside, removing existing bike lanes would be a monumentally bizarre decision. This would be a trifecta of bad decisions: millions of dollars would be wasted not only on the removal cost of a popular transportation option, but also its previous installation; a popular and effective transit option on major thoroughfares would be removed and lead to congestion; and drivers would be inconvenienced anyway by the construction work of removing permanent bike lanes and rebuilding the roadbed.

This effort also represents another glaring example of this government’s willingness to trample over the jurisdiction of municipalities and the desires of people living within them. This government has consistently inserted itself into the affairs of municipalities based on what appears to be lingering petty grievances the premier holds towards the city he once worked for. While municipalities are not constitutional entities and are creatures of the provinces, this move tramples a long-standing convention of letting cities handle their own transport systems. It is especially brash to legislate how a city uses its own streets that aren’t even provincially maintained. The provincial government was more than happy to ignore the crumbling state of the Gardiner Expressway for decades before it was under their control, but has now decided to insert itself into the affairs of city streets it does not pay to maintain.

This bill represents everything this government has come to be known for over its 6-year tenure; trampling over municipal jurisdiction, wasting millions in public funds, and acting on the petty grievances of an immature premier. Passing this bill into law would be an enormous mistake not soon forgotten by the citizens of the most populous city—and most vote-rich jurisdiction—in the province.