I'm adding my voice to the…

I'm adding my voice to the chorus of concerned Ontarians who urge this provincial government to keep their hands off local municipal decisions. The cycle tracks that would be removed because of this irresponsible overreach have been keeping vulnerable residents safer when choosing sustainable and affordable transportation.

Ever since the introduction of the University Ave bike lane it has filled a major gap in the Toronto cycling network. I have taken that bike lane to and from errands and attractions multiple times per week continuously since it was introduced. There is simply no replacement for how amazing this option has been. Prior to that lane I had to mace a choice between detouring by over 1 km, or fighting aggressive drivers in mixed lanes on streets such as Bay St or Church St.

The Yonge North bike lane has also filled an important gap, simply by way of the fact that *there are no alternatives*. There simply is no bike-safe side street that parallels Yonge from Bloor to Eglinton given the city's unique geography. Cars have plenty of alternatives including Mount Pleasant (which is VERY dangerous for cyclists) and Avenue Road. The Yonge lane also adds an important cycling access point from the downtown core to the excellent Beltline trail.

The Bloor West bike lanes have enabled cycling in a part of the city that has also has no viable alternatives, again because with the city's geography *there are no parallel sides streets*. Before those lanes, riding that stretch of Bloor was like fighting highway traffic.

I want to take a moment to bust open the fallacy that removing these bike lanes will do anything to relieve traffic. In recent years the gig economy has seen an explosion of delivery workers on the road for services such as DoorDash and UberEats. There are both cars and bicycles facilitating these deliveries. Most of the shops where they are picking up their deliveries are *on main roads*. So when these roads have bike lanes, cycling becomes a viable way to execute these orders.

What do you think will happen if the bike lanes are removed?? The gig workers will feel less safe cycling to deliver these orders. But the order volume won't be going down. So what will happen instead is, more of these orders will be serviced by cars. What do you think will happen to rush-hour traffic volumes on the road if all the bikes delivering your dinner suddenly turned into cars?

And how many people will decide, when their safest bike route has been destroyed, that they may as well just hop an Uber or a Lyft to their destination instead of bike there? What do you think will happen to rush-hour traffic volumes on the road if everyone who would have hopped on a bike share suddenly becomes another car on the road?

I urge this government to stand down, listen to actual experts, and retract this disastrous bill before it creates more traffic on the road and causes more cyclist deaths.