On Bike Lanes: I grew up in…

On Bike Lanes:

I grew up in Toronto, over a decade ago. Every day, when I could, I biked to school and back. My elementary was too close to justify anything past a brisk walk, but by bike my middle and high school were no more than short trip away. I intend to return to Toronto once my career allows it and live the rest of my life there, preferably car-free until my twilight years. I write this portion of the comment as a Torontonian first and Ontarian second.

Bill 212 saves nobody no time whatsoever. For those taking moderate journeys, it either returns them to their vehicles, throws them onto the main lane, or into the winding web of side streets that twist and turn in a direction vaguely parallel to the main. For those taking longer journeys by car, it ensures that they are stuck behind the extra vehicles - or worse, the cyclists who chose not to compromise by side street.

Pedestrians are the lifeblood of a city's retail area. They need little more space than that which they occupy and are easily swayed into entering a business, needing no thought as to the nearest parking space, nor to fees, nor fear of traffic around them. Cyclists are capable of a far greater range in which to roam, and though they must account for parking their bikes, they have no other disadvantages to the pedestrian. Twelve bikes can confidently fit within a single vehicle's parking space, guaranteeing double the capacity of a motor vehicle - if we assume that each vehicle is filled with five passengers every trip. Removing bicycle infrastructure from the most commercial streets removes this benefit of cycling, both making fewer people want to start trips to commercial areas and eliminating the possibility of impromptu stops.

In the same vein, up to six cyclists can proceed within the space a single car takes up. Removing two (half-width) bike lanes in exchange for two full lanes means potentially dumping up to four extra vehicles onto roads. Even with the increased capacity of the road, each lane can contend with, at the worst, two extra vehicles per lane per direction for every one car already on the road, that could have been instead off to the side, out of the way of the people who need to use their cars for distance or carrying capacity. It's worth noting that cycling increases disproportionately to how connected a network is - the sun is still rising on Toronto's ability to be a cycling city, and the results already make good on much of the promise. This bill will end that prematurely, returning Toronto to the very congestion that existed in the 2000s - which the bike lanes are solving!

Finally, I believe this bill to be an absolute overreach of provincial powers. It should be the City's task to determine how best to manage its streets and transportation infrastructure. This sort of meddling is beyond what the Province's government should be engaged in, and the only silver lining is that by being a provincial bill, it allows me to express my disdain at it through this forum from my residence elsewhere in Ontario.

On Highways:

While most of the above reasoning can be discarded, I believe that the conclusion is similar: the government should strive to find alternatives that keep people merely travelling from one place to another out of the way of those who are bringing food and products into the areas that most need them. Adding a lane just means you have four lanes of people stuck in traffic instead of three. Investing in transit means you have four lanes of people in a single streetcar instead.

Regardless, some of the chicanery

On Broadband:

This seems an unusual bill to put such a matter in, and should be passed separately. That said, better internet access may reduce the number of trips taken on roads, making this, ironically, the only part of the bill that promises to actually improve roads for the public at large.