This proposal should be…

This proposal should be withdrawn.

Planning for municipal bike lanes does not fall within provincial jurisdiction. The Ontario government does not have direct authority over the municipal planning process, which has been rightly delegated to respective municipal governments. In Toronto, planning decisions for bike lanes are part of a city-wide integrated Cycling Network Plan, which was the result of years of data collection, expert review, community consultations, and political decisions from Toronto's elected city council.

The Ontario government does not have adequate data collection, technical planning capacity & expertise, or adequate community consultation processes to make decisions about municipal streets. Municipal street are not the jurisdiction of provincial planning decisions. Provincial interference with municipal planning interferes with Municipal Plans. These are municipal planning decisions for a reason. Ontario should defer to elected municipal governments and their dedicated city planning departments to make these decisions.

This proposal will get people killed. Blocking or removing bike lanes will lead to significant numbers of preventable deaths and injuries from Ontario residents. Six Toronto residents have already died in 2024 alone due to inadequate bicycle safety infrastructure. Countless studies show protected bike lanes improve the safety of all road users, including drivers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140518301488…

Repeated studies from all over the world, including Ontario, show that bike lanes do not increase congestion. In fact, protected bike lanes are tool specifically designed to reduce car traffic in urban centres, based on decades of data and international best-practice. Top-tier cities around the world universally deploy protected bike lanes in urban cores for this reason. Removing bike lanes will make grid-lock worse, damage the city economy and hurt small businesses along bike lane routes.

Many Toronto residents own cars, but choose to ride bikes downtown instead, to avoid gridlock traffic. By removing safe, protected transportation routes, many would chose to drive again instead, increasing traffic congestion.

Bill 212 is an attack on Ontario residents which will make traffic worse, lead to deaths and injuries, cause significant economic damage,

Ontario should rescind this dangerous, costly, misguided, and legally overreaching proposal and leave municipal planning decisions up to municipalities.