As a recent UofT Dental…

As a recent UofT Dental school graduate removing the Bloor, Yonge and University bike lanes is an absurdly backwards move with respect to safe, efficient traffic infrastructure.

You have a population of students in various UofT programs (Undergraduate, Masters, PhD, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Medicine) as well as Mt. Sinai healthcare workers who use the University street bike lanes every day. By removal of the bike lane you will be requiring them to walk or add additional traffic to public transit or lanes. The foot print of one car parking spot can hold ~10 bicycles, or 1 car in a lane holding about 6 stopped cyclists. With the ever growing population of toronto set to increase year by year, how does it make sense to make currently overburdened public infrastructure, or currently overburdened car lanes take on even more commuters?

Tying in that statistic that 1 car's parking spot can park 10 bicycles, how many more customers can small businesses fit with a bike lock stand of 10 bikes per 1 car. There are definitely not 10 customers in one car but there can easily be 10 customers on 10 bikes. (or more with the recently more popular cargo ebicycle)

Also consider that other commentators stating "bike lanes aren't used enough" are often looking at bike lanes in that appear out of nowhere with no safe connection to other bike lanes in the city. If you saw an incomplete street that cars don't regularly use because its not incomplete you wouldn't make the same remarks.

There are also more social benefits that are so carelessly overlooked. The lower amount of road damage needing repair and environmental damage that costs tax payers money in the long run are so much higher for automobiles compared to bicycles or public transit. The detriment to health by hazardous gas emissions, the increased cardiovascular risk without regular exercise (Which cycling to work reduces). There's a lot of reasons this bill is extremely short sighted. Despite how obvious the benefits of safe cycling infrastructure are for the city and the people its almost like the city planners have prioritized the financial embezzling tax payer by demolishing bike infrastructure into rather than invest into the health and wellbeing of the city and its people.

Sincerely,
A prior undergraduate student who biked to school, a current dentist who bikes to work when he can, and a citizen concerned for the financial, health and safety of the people of the cities this bill affects.