Solving traffic problems isn…

Solving traffic problems isn’t going to come from reducing bike lanes. Cycling to get around the city is something that should be encouraged as a part of this solution. Bike lanes provide safe and efficient means of getting around the city without a car or transit. This functionally reduces the number of commuters who rely on cars to get where they need to go.

The new bike lane infrastructure in Toronto has massively increased the safety of this mode of transportation and helped to provide a more comprehensive network of safe cycling paths. Doing this will encourage more people, who otherwise would have felt unsafe on the road to see cycling as a real option. Removing bike lanes will make cycling less safe. It will increase the chances of someone being killed on their way to work or school. If a cyclist dies on a road that previously had a bike lane, it will be both devastating and infuriating as it was entirely preventable. Their blood will be on the hands of those who chose to pass this bill.

The hypocrisy of claiming to be fiscally conservative, while planning to waste money to rip out brand new infrastructure that the city has just invested in is wild. There are so many things we can and should be spending public dollars on - addressing out housing crisis, our climate crisis, improving our transit system, supporting our most vulnerable, improving our public parks and open space, fixing roads and other infrastructure that are in need of repair. Demolishing infrastructure that is brand new and supports healthy, climate friendly, affordable and efficient means of getting around the city to go back to a condition where traffic will still suck and cyclists will now be risking their lives while trying to get where they need to go without spending money on transit or cars is unconscionable.

If there is one thing that has a real impact on traffic flow in the city it’s construction. We just went through months of construction putting these bike lanes which have radically improved how safe I feel biking to and from work, school, and anywhere else I need to go. The idea of spending the next few months ripping them out disrupting traffic for the everyone all over again is infuriating.

If you actually want to solve the traffic problem you need to find a way to get less cars on the street. Provide better transit options, more safe cycling infrastructure not less.