The proposed removal of bike…

The proposed removal of bike infrastructure along University, Bloor, and Yonge in Toronto seems to be an illogical one. University in particular is still able to have 2-3 lanes of car traffic despite the bike lanes that Ford deems as intrusive to cars. I struggle to understand the desire to remove a secondary transportation option along a major street, especially when the infrastructure for it is improving and cars still have room to operate along it. The city should seek to promote options for transportation, not funnel everyone into cars.

Additionally Ford's proposal suggests that because there are a lower number of cyclists than drivers, we should remove cycling infrastructure and seek to halt further development. I find this reasoning to be circular. It doesn't necessarily follow that because we have low ridership comparative to cars there is no demand for better cycling infrastructure. In fact I believe that the opposite is true. The reason cycling ridership is lower than cars is because car infrastructure vastly outnumbers bike infrastructure. The city has been designed specifically to funnel as many cars as possible through it. The bike infrastructure we do have is unreliable and sparse, often ending abruptly and shooting cyclists out onto a busy street full of cars with no protective barrier to separate them. This leads to a feeling of uncertainty when cycling in the city. I would be much more inclined to ride a bike downtown if I knew that the routes I was taking were grade separated from car traffic, and would get me to my destination without hurling me into multiple lanes of car traffic. No one wants to cycle along the shoulder of a busy street. Take the new development in the port lands for example. I usually use the subway or walk downtown, but the cycling infrastructure near the port lands engenders a feeling of safety and ease of navigation that has led to me cycling through the area on a number of occasions. If more places in the city were properly outfitted with safe cycling infrastructure I believe the ridership would increase dramatically. Low ridership does not equal low demand, it is indicative of the inadequacies present in the current infrastructure.