My comments are specific to…

My comments are specific to aspects of this proposed bill that single out removal of bike lanes within the City of Toronto. I oppose this aspect of the proposal for a few reasons:
1) this is a local issue that only affects the City of Toronto. Why is the provincial government interfering in local matters? This is against the will of the locally elected Toronto city council and takes away resources from the Ontario government that should be put to use in a way that benefits Ontario as a whole. While I am currently a resident of Toronto, I was raised in Niagara Region and lived in Waterloo Region for 5 years and I don’t feel like this has anything to do with such areas of Ontario.
2) I am a driver, a cyclist and a user of the TTC. I understand that a sound transportation plan for the City of Toronto involves multiple modes of transportation and we should not only be thinking of streets as being for the benefit of motorists. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would drive on Yonge, University or Bloor when all three have subway lines along them? As a motorist though, I actually prefer to drive streets with separated bike lanes. There are many people in Toronto that commute, socialize and do errands by bike so they will still be there if bike lanes are removed. Bloor before bike lanes was a mess of trying to get around cyclists to drive along. It felt unsafe as a motorist and as a cyclist. For all but two hours per day, parking was allowed on Bloor and when it wasn’t, the right lane was taken up by cyclists anyway which effectively meant there was only one driving lane in each direction anyway. I feel the current setup with bike lanes is safer and more orderly.
3) The City of Toronto has already done the traffic studies and considered that information upon making the decision to build the bike lanes. This proposed act reeks of political meddling with no logical reasoning. Again, I’ll state this is a waste of provincial government resources.