As someone who has grown up…

As someone who has grown up in Toronto, I am very familiar with the city's car-centric culture and long-standing resistance to adapt its transportation culture to provide efficient and safe routes for users of all transportation modes. Bill 212 would continue this harmful tradition and cause more harm than good. While there are overarching issues and other examples of this, it is obviously important to focus on the current bill at hand. Additionally, it is important to remember this affects all other municipalities in Ontario, although the focus of the bill is clearly on the city of Toronto. If Bill 212 is passed, it would add additional bureaucracy to local governments, take away infrastructure that provides equity to all road users, create an unsafe environment for both cyclists and drivers, slow our progress towards a sustainable province, and not even fix the problem it aims to solve.

By adding provincial mandates to all new bike lanes taking away a lane of traffic - even in smaller towns and on side streets - local governments are forced under additional bureaucracy, preventing them from providing additional transportation options. This slows progress of transportation infrastructure and takes away power from locally elected government officials who understand the needs of communities better than provincial officials.

By reducing the amount of bike lanes installed, and taking away existing bike lanes on University Ave., Younge St., and Bloor St., Ontario would be taking away essential infrastructure for bike users, who have a right to infrastructure as much as any other road user. To put it in perspective, there would be much controversy to remove a hardly used sidewalk on a traffic packed road because the people who do use the sidewalk would be left without a safe choice for travelling down the road. Specifically in Toronto, bike infrastructure has been improving so much in recent years. The true scale of how much bikes will be used in the future is yet to be seen because the bike network is still very young and incomplete (however, where it is more complete there is far more usage) which is why it looks like biking is hardly in demand (because it's still very difficult for most people to bike safely). One example of very tangible success is the increase in ridership on Toronto's ride-share program, which has exploded in ridership and continues to break records as of late.

By removing bike lanes and reducing the amount installed in the future, both bike and car users would be left in an unsafe environment. People will still have to use Bloor St. for biking, and the likelihood of ending up with another fatal collision such as the one involving 58-year-old grandmother Dalia Chako at Bloor and St. George will drastically increase. Mixing cars and bikes is difficult and unsafe for both users. As a frequent driver, I would much rather have cyclists separated in their own lane then have to overtake and worry about them in my own lane, even if it means sacrificing a lane of car traffic. Additionally, removing bike infrastructure puts children in jeopardy. Census data does not consider the volume of children under 15 biking to school or events, and while the impact on children will be little on the major bike corridors being removed, slowing the addition of bike infrastructure in communities where children frequently bike will be costly to their safety and well-being.

Pollution is an ever pertinent topic when talking about transportation. Toronto's vast public transportation system, though in dire need of improvements, has done immeasurable good for reducing the population in Toronto and helping the environment. Bike infrastructure is the next step in reducing the amount of cars and the reliance on cars to get from point A to point B in order to reduce the impact all Ontario municipalities have on the environment. Adding red tape to cycle projects and removing the identified bike corridors in this bill sets our progress backwards and forces people to rely on cars even more, which is harmful for both the environment, people who can't afford cars, and the safety of car users as well (more cars=more collisions).

Finally, this bill wouldn't even succeed in its goal of reducing gridlock in the downtown Toronto area. Bloor St. was bumper to bumper before the bike lanes were even installed, so it isn't like that would change all of a sudden. The simple idea of induced demand (which is why you can't just add 3 lanes to a highway to solve traffic) would create even more traffic. All the people who used bike lanes will have to switch to cars, and our traffic woes will continue.

To conclude, it's important to remember that the bike lanes to be removed and bike lanes in general are installed for a reason, and fixing traffic by adding more reliance on cars in not a solution. Focusing on creating diversity in transit options and reducing the reliance on cars is a necessary step in solving gridlock issues and creating a cleaner and safer Ontario.