I am commenting on this…

I am commenting on this proposed legislation in my capacity as a private individual and resident of Ottawa.

I strongly disagree with the proposed changes to the Highway Traffic Act.

The last thing that we need is one more layer of bureaucracy in making changes to our local infrastructure. In our city, many protected bike lanes are installed in direct response to tragic, unnecessary deaths when a cyclist is run over by a car or truck. Rather than simply lamenting the tragedy, we respond by changing the built environment, thus preventing future tragedies. Taking away our ability to decide immediately on the right, local solution in specific circumstances is a waste of both our and the provincial bureaucracy’s time. The insanity of actually removing protected bike lanes that have already been built would be both a waste of money and would re-introduce fatal risk into our city.

In our family, we use all modes of transportation that we can. We walk to school and work, I get groceries using a cargo bike, my teenaged children bike or use public transportation to get to their extracurricular activities where it is feasible to do so, and we drive to visit friends in the suburbs or to get our children to activities that they can’t get themselves to. I would love for us to be able to bike more and to drive my children less; every single place that I or my children can get ourselves to by bike or public transport is one less car on the road. I want to do my part to reduce traffic congestion and also build more regular exercise into my day, but this is only possible by having protected bike lanes. Reducing a road by one lane to allow safe cycling in both directions (bike lanes are much narrower than car lanes) will reduce traffic congestion on every single road we use (just my children and their friends cycling together would probably take four cars off the road on a regular basis).

As a driver, I also would much rather have bikes in their own, protected lanes. I don’t want to have to worry about hitting a cyclist while I drive, just as I do not want to worry about getting hit when I bike.

In short, every city needs to be able to figure out for itself how to allow its residents to get safely everywhere they need to go. When it comes to the local balance between walking, cycling, public transportation and driving on a road-by-road basis, the province can and should leave it to each city to decide.

Thank you for your time and attention.