As an Uber driver that just…

As an Uber driver that just so happens to live in the city, bike lanes are a necessity. Why should we adhere to the drivers that don’t even live in the city? Why should they(Brampton, Richmond, Hill, Oakville, etc. drivers ) get the say of what happens here in the city.

1. Bike lanes help me focus on driving with more attention on the road rather than focussing on if I’m going to hit someone today. Proper safety for the cyclist is paramount as a driver. I don’t want to hit them as much as they don’t want to crash into me. I honestly feel much safer driving on Bloor that I do on Queen Street.

2. How about improving public transit around the GTA. make the GO Train more accessible and more frequent. This will allow GTA drivers to finally realize how good they actually have it to not have to drive downtown. Majority of the drivers that I see driving downtown are ones not living downtown or even in the Burroughs of North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, etc., etc. Also, can the Eglington streetcar line finally finish? That is literally taking too long and will help the gridlock as soon as it’s done. What is taking so long? Is it the workers that are delaying everything? Is the funding going elsewhere? is it possible to just put the money being spent on dismantling the bike lanes into incentivizing them to finally finish this?

3. What a waste of public dollars if you were to take those bike lanes down after all the money spent putting them all up. How idiotic. The city will never have good things because of it.

4. Hasn’t it already been proven that bike lanes are actually much more efficient than car traffic? Main cities in Europe don’t seem to have our problem.

I had just come back from Europe about a month ago and I have to say Toronto traffic is an absolute mess compared to those cities who have integrated bike lanes and public transit to work in harmony. Toronto can never be great until this can be fixed. We know the city can be a lot better, which is why we are even angrier than usual.

I honestly hope you guys favour the decision to keep the bike lanes. I would much prefer the city being safe for both the drivers and the cyclists. Drivers will talk about how they’re late for things because of lane reductions and what not but I see that as a responsibility of themselves. They’d much rather blame everything around them rather than themselves for their misfortune. Count how many single occupancy drivers there are in the city and check the back of their license plates and see which dealership they got their car from and you will notice that they are not from the city. If cities like London, Munich, Paris, Rome can be harmonious with drivers and cyclists, then I don’t see a reason why Toronto can’t be like that.

Thank you for reading this. Hopefully the resolution will be to favour the bike lane still being in the city and even more being created for the benefit of the downtown. As downtowners we’ve already adjusted to the bike lanes. It’s time for the drivers that live outside the city to adjust rather than complain.

- Downtown Toronto Driver