Comments on - Bill 212 -…

Comments on - Bill 212 - Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, 2024 - Framework for bike lanes that require removal of a traffic lane.

I am an 83 year old bicycle rider living in Toronto. I use a bicycle for shopping errands and for recreation, riding with a group of seniors once a week for a distance of 20 to 30 km. We use both park trails and protected bike lanes and some roads without protected bike lanes.
My wife and I oppose Bill 212 for the following reasons;
1. Removing bike lanes in Ontario’s cities and towns will do nothing to improve traffic congestion or traffic gridlock. The reason is that people who are now using their bicycles for 5 km to 10 km shopping trips or other errands or the ‘last km’ to and from a subway station safely inside a protected bicycle lane, will now resort to driving a car out of fear of injury or death which will just increase the gridlock. Every person riding a bike is a person who isn't in a car, or a taxi or Uber, contributing to congestion. And almost all cars we have observed whether on the 400 highways or on Toronto streets, have only one occupant, the driver. This is completely inefficient. There needs to be more mandated HOV lanes and education to encourage road to carpool when driving to and from work. This action by itself would relieve congestion without any government spending on expensive new roads like the proposed highway 413. Is the Provincial government interested in moving more people or more single occupancy cars? Filling our roads and highways with cars will not move more people. And there are no bike lanes on 400 highways, the worst congested roads in the province.
2. Bike lanes are not a problem because there are so few of them in Toronto or any other city or town in Ontario. There is no evidence for saying that these few bike lanes are causing congestion. Bike lanes are a non-problem. In fact cyclists risk their lives by riding beside cars in order to use less fossil fuel energy, take up less space than single occupancy cars and live healthier than car drivers, using less health care resources. We cyclists love riding because it is such a healthy and enjoyable way to do our errands and have recreation at the same time. And for this we are treated as second or third class citizens whose lives are not worth protecting from fast moving tons of steel. My wife and I have travelled to the Netherlands, and noticed especially in Amsterdam the enormous number of people, men, women, children on bicycles, going to and from work plus the use of cargo bikes to carry goods and children successfully. And the bicycle parking infrastructure at bus/train stations is just unimaginable here in Ontario. We understand that this is the case in other European cities such as Copenhagen.
3. Also in response to critics who say that bike lanes have reduced emergency vehicle response times - according to Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop, emergency response times have *improved* since the Bloor bike lanes were installed. Bike lanes are good for everybody.
4. Bike lanes are good for business, they save cities money, they help people live happier, healthier, more connected lives. In fact in The Annex, a neighbourhood in Toronto, the Bloor Annex BIA (the BIA represents business and property owners on Bloor Street from Madison Avenue to Bathurst Street) says that since the creation of bike lanes on Bloor St. in 2016, bicycle riders have contributed to lower car congestion and improved business in the stores along Bloor Street. “The BIA said that removing the lanes on Bloor would be disastrous to the neighbourhood.” “The BIA argues there are 8,000 cyclists using Bloor bike lanes per day. The bike lanes have been part of a renewal project for the area for the past nine years.” (Toronto Today, October 23, 2024).
5. But this threat to not allow creation of new bike lanes and remove present ones is not actually about bike lanes and congestion. It is about the current Provincial government trying to create a wedge issue, to seem to take the side of car drivers over bicycle users. It is about trying to receive more votes in the upcoming election, some time in 2025, a year ahead of the scheduled provincial election in order to achieve another majority result under our ‘first pass the post’ elections where the majority of citizens do not get what they voted for, with a majority government often being attained with the support of only 18% of eligible voters. I think to create a wedge issue on the backs of vulnerable cyclists who only desire protection from fast moving tons of steel is despicable. We cyclists are truly lower class citizens whose lives are not cared for by this government. We cyclists, if we don’t own a car, are also treated with disrespect when it comes to Ontario government finances. Car drivers, not cyclists receive a great deal from the province. Car drivers have been made exempt from paying their registration fees for many months now. In addition gasoline taxes have been lowered for drivers and I just heard that that will continue into 2025, no doubt through any election call.
6. There is a larger set of issues with the private auto. I remember Quaker engineer, writer and speaker Ursula Franklin, now deceased who spoke at a Massey Lecture likely more than a decade ago. She talked about how people, animals, birds, insects, plants and trees are occupied by mobile industrial machines (cars and trucks) imposing themselves into our every day lives. She said that nearly the entire Earth (and now ocean bottoms) is in danger of being turned into a ‘production site’. That is what continues to happen with the province’s road building projects such as the unnecessary highway 413 - which is just north of little used highway 407 and which will remove the habitats (homes) of countless animals, birds and insects. We are currently in the midst of the largest mass species extinction of living beings in millions of years. We need to protect every one we have left. Living in a city such as Toronto, it is impossible to escape the influence of the private automobile. It is allowed to be everywhere, parked on our streets or noisily moving through them. Our lives should not be like this. That is why walking and riding a small human powered wheeled device is so important to our health and welfare. The private auto is also a major contributor to air pollution and the release of greenhouse gases (25%+ of all releases) into our atmosphere which is already dooming us to the dangerous weather which is killing more of us all over the world. Just imagine a city with cars banned from many downtown streets. We have experienced this in Europe. It was wonderful to walk in the middle of streets with many people and a few bicycles. Why can’t we have that experience in Toronto, or in any city in Ontario? Why can’t we have what most of us want - healthy, non-polluting human powered transportation.