Gridlock has been a concern…

Gridlock has been a concern for ever since I can remember in Toronto. I've been hearing about gridlock and seeing it with my own eyes for 20 plus years. You have many major highways with many lanes spilling into a city with narrow lanes, bound by the physical limitation of buildings. If cars are continually promoted, it is inevitable that this will continue.

Traffic jams are nothing new and the addition of the bike lanes in this city has not increased gridlock in the long term, but has made thousands of people not bring cars into the city. When I worked in the financial district, I saw doctors, lawyers, and other business people take bikes around the core, because it would get jammed up with cars and with streetcars getting blocked by cars. This proves that it is not just a mode of transit for the poor, but a smart choice of getting around for those that have the money to afford a car as well. I know many thousands of other people use bicycles to get around daily. Additionally, many businesses on Bloor, and other areas, have reported increases in business when the lanes were installed.

I have never been held back from arriving somewhere on time because of my bicycle or blocked up traffic because of it. I, myself, gave my vehicle up when I moved to Toronto because my bicycle gets me places that cars get stuck in, whether there's a car accident, a broken down car, a car stuck in the middle of an intersection turning on a light they shouldn't be, and probably the biggest problem we're facing right now, construction, that reduces lanes pretty much everywhere in the city, and is being forced on this city by your own OMB with a 97% approval rate for all building proposals submitted, regardless of how many elderly on fixed incomes are in the current buildings on site.

As your government forces these developments, we need a diversity of modes of transit and need to start creating better, safer communities, of which drivers in cars, time and time again, make more dangerous by speeding, by changing lanes improperly, not stopping for stop signs, not checking blindspots when turning or opening car doors, zipping through intersections while making rights on red lights. I counted five cars the other day whip through without stopping at Parliament and Carlton's intersection on a right hand turn while the light was red. I see people daily rush red lights onto Lakeshore under the Gardiner. Running red lights is one of the top reasons for car accidents in this province. I see people run stop signs daily with their cars on Queen's Quay, and have seen two separate incidents where parents with babies in strollers were almost hit while walking across the crosswalk. 18 people walking or cycling have been killed in this city in 2024 so far. The numbers have been going down since 2016 when it was 78 people and I feel cycling infrastructure plays a big role in that.

When I compare the danger of people on bikes doing the same things that vehicles do, because both road users abuse road laws, of course I would want everyone to obey the rules, but if I had to choose between bicycles and cars breaking the law, I would rather have a city full of bicycles doing it than tonnes and tonnes of metal able to easily kill a person. At just 45 kilometres an hour, a pedestrian's chances of survival is less than 50% of surviving a car's impact. Pedestrians have almost no chance of surviving an impact at 80 kilometres an hour and roads like Jarvis and Lakeshore often have people driving that fast up and down it.

Your own research and much other research, both locally and globally, reinforces that bike lanes have a net positive impact. Each time a lane has been added here in Toronto, and places like Hamilton, I've seen more women on bicycles, more families on bicycles, more children on bicycles. Car traffic slows making our disastrous amount of human deaths by cars in Toronto much lower and much easier to avoid. Car insurance in this province and this area is brutal because of car accidents. We have drivers who are now going through a graduated licensing system that is less stringent and more rushed through based on your government's alterations to it, adding to the already brutal drivers I see on the roads when I both drive my car and ride my bike. Not to mention your failure to actually be able to correctly prosecute all of the drunk drivers over the last couple of years.

We have two massive transit projects that are massively delayed and the province should be focusing on these. I would say to be wise with our tax dollars, but any look at the misuse of federal money for our healthcare, forcing the destruction of Ontario Place over night and keeping the deal secret, forcing the 413 and again exempting it from an EA, closing The Ontario Science Centre when fixing the current one would be cheaper, your neglect of our healthcare system and education system, it's clear that's not a priority.

Your vilification of vulnerable road users who are keeping our air clean, trying to reduce congestion, get to work on time, and keep our communities safer is smoke and mirrors away from the actual problems you are failing to address. You are clogging up our tax dollars that have already been invested and projects that are already on the move in many municipalities. I shouldn't be surprised though since your government pulled out electric vehicle charging stations only to put them back in later. Don't let this be what you do with our bicycle lanes as well once you realize this was a poor decision.

Bicycle infrastructure, when compared to all other types of infrastructure for movement, is far cheaper and easier to install. 5.7 million unique trips were taken with just city bikes alone last year as reported by CBC News, and 2024 was on pace in early September to beat that record again. The parking for city bikes takes up very little room compared to vehicle parking. The global trend in major cities our size is to have denser more efficient cities. You are forcing the density, but now want to force municipalities to back out of the efficiency.

Emergency response times are being reduced in areas where bike lanes have been installed, as reported by Fire Services at one of the public consultations for the bike lanes on Bloor.
On top of that, many of the leading causes of death in Canadians can be avoided if more people were able to bike safely. Hypertension, many heart conditions, many other ailments, and almost 2,000 road deaths and 118,853 injuries in 2022 in the province of Ontario would be greatly reduced if your government wasn't forcing cars on everyone, forcing highways on everyone, forcing inefficient suburbs on everyone, and pushing cities to grow and swallow up small towns and farmland.

Our transit can be unreliable. Our cars get stuck. The elderly need to have communities they can walk in and bike in where they're not dependent on cars that become unsafer for them to operate with age. And with Baby Boomers getting to those ages, we need more options for this large portion of our population so they're not isolated. It would be more helpful if things like sidewalks were installed in areas where people can't currently walk, but would be able to.

Bike lane usage is increasing all over the city. Food delivery services are used by so many that GO Train schedules have been altered to accommodate food delivery drivers from Brampton. Some angry people say they never see people in the lanes, but in many instances, it's because we don't get stuck and can continue on.

As an aside, it's also interesting that this is on the Environmental Registry of Ontario, the organization that you are actively ignoring and bulldozing over, by exempting yourself from environmental assessments, the heritage act, having cancelled the credit system we had with California and Quebec that has forced us into the federal carbon tax plan, all while gutting conservation authorities, and muzzling scientists. I doubt there's much environment you want to actually protect, especially while stealing farmland from people in Wilmot County and Vaughan. I'm actually surprised you didn't get some type of exemption from even posting this on this website.

Cities are growing, changing, and evolving and we need to plan for the future, both the climate, our social interactions, our health, and cities' livability. There are growing pains with the lanes on Bloor in Etobicoke, and, yes, there has been admitted congestion growth, but that is being worked on with signal upgrades and other measures. Yes, there are definite reductions in lane usage in winter, but for the people that use them during those times, it saves their lives. And that's the most important point I want to make. Your government removing lanes kills people. That's why doctors laid down their lives on Jarvis when those lanes were removed almost a decade ago.

Your government needs to focus on real issues and not how municipalities, who have studied their own streets, and have very different traffic flows and issues between them, are implementing their infrastructure, or, at the very least, work with them rather than bulldozing everything through, like your corrupt government has been. Your choice is literally to save a couple of minutes of car time, which is already being researched on how to reduce it, or killing people. Save my life, please.

A tax-paying citizen, car driver, pedestrian, and person who rides a bike