Bike lanes should not be…

Bike lanes should not be removed for the benefit of car commuters to solve "gridlock" when the vast majority of car traffic happens due to the sheer space each car takes up and the amount of people who choose to commute by car. Adding a lane will never fix the problem of induced and latent demand of major arterial roads, and the only way to solve traffic is to actively provide viable commute alternatives to cars which take up a significantly less amount of space per commuter. Doug Ford's plan is a display of total disrespect against those who don't use the same mode of transportation as him, and is a showing of the "suburbanite" car-centric mindset. Sure, people who drive cars are trying to get to places, but so are cyclists, who are also people. Driving a car does not automatically make one superior to others who choose other modes of transportation, and one group absolutely should not be able to make another's commute less safe and convenient to "benefit"(further explaination down below) their own.

To respond to arguements such as " I never see bike lanes being used", there are two things to consider. Firstly, car-centric commute has long been massively funded by the government, hence the conveniency of driving with a car, but most of the time, costs of road repair, expansions, come out of every tax payer, including those who do not drive. In contrast, bike commute network are much less developed due to chronic underfunding and politics caused by people who believe "bike lanes are taking away their road space" when in reality, less people in cars and more people on bikes results in an overal decrease in car traffic. The sparse network of bike lanes lower the amount of commuters who can reliably choose to commute with a bike, highlighting the need for a more connected network instead claims of redundancy by some. Secondly, since bikes take up much less space than cars do, 100 cars passing through a road looks much less than 100 bikes passing through a road, which is also a reason why some may come to the conclusion that bike lanes are underused. However, the aforementioned reasons are invalid arguements and should be refuted in light of the evidence provided.

As mentioned above, more people on bikes means less cars on roads, which leads to an overall decrease in car traffic. De-incentivizing municipalities from installing new bike lanes and the straight up removal of them to prioritize motor traffic is not only unfair and unsafe to those who commute with bikes, but can also lead to an increase in car traffic as bike commuters now have to put their lives at risk when riding on roads (legal by the way) and take up space in laneways instead of having their own dedicated lanes. Previous deaths of cyclists and common sense will lead to the conclusion that cars are much more deadly to cyclists than cyclists are to cars. Therefore, through this proposed bill, it seems like the province is trying to increase car traffic and civilian deaths from traffic accidents related to bikes. This bill should be promptly rejected, and it is concerning that such a proposal was approved for consideration.