Bike lanes and other non…

Bike lanes and other non-automobile modes of transportation are vital for a city. Cars in Toronto alone cause over 38,000 accidents a year (1), kill dozens (2), cost billions of dollars annually (3), take up enormous amounts of space, transportation emits over 30% of the gas emissions of the city (4), and create constant noise which affects the health of citizens (5). Provincially they kill over 400 (6), cause over 36 thousand accidents (7), cost billions in infrastructure (8), and emitt around 50 MT (9). By removing bike lanes and adding restrictions you are going to make cities worse. Adding more car lanes has proven again and again to make congestion worse, as induced demand from more drivers using the road counteracts the extra space provided (10). So if this were to go through you would spend an estimate 48 million, removing bike lanes to intsall the deadly, ineffective, polluting car infrastructure to make traffic worse, congratulations (11).
With bike lanes businesses see more customers as has been proven by the bike lanes on Bloor Street (12), which is one of the targets of this bill. They also make cycling safer, reduce pollution, make citizens healthier, and biking is more accessible to those who can’t drive do to any number of reasons. They also take cars off the road which helps reduce congestion, which is the entire goal of this bill. The reason the percentage of cyclists is so low compared to cars is because there is significantly less investment in bikes (11) than in cars (3), and the solution isn’t to pump more money into cars (14).
When you don’t provide any meaningful alternative to driving, you force everyone to use one of the worst and least efficient modes of transportation that uses the most space per individual, costs tens of thousands to purchase, over a thousand per year in insurance, over a hundred per month in maintenance, over 300 per month in gas, and accelerates climate change which is actively killing hundreds of thousands per year (13) along with untold numbers of species and crippling economies. It is inaccessible to the visually impaired, deaf, neurodivergent, elderly, young, and actively makes their lives worse by forcing them to either find someone who can drive them places, take public transportation which is underfunded and slowed down extensively by cars, or forced to walk or bike with dangerous automobiles which could easily kill them BY ACCIDENT. Cars reduce the quality of life significantly for everyone (14). If we make it harder to transition away from cars we will spend decades dealing with the consequences. Investing in cars is among the worst possible thing Ontario could spend its taxpayers’ money on. Why are we vilifying bike lanes (15) when there are actual problems that need to be tackled like the housing crisis. You don’t need to make up a perceived problem and then spend millions fixing it. I’d rather you spend your energy throwing the money that would need to be spent replacing the bike lanes into a fire because that at least wouldn’t make life worse for Ontarians.

References
1. Tow Truck News. “Areas in Toronto With The Highest Car Accidents”. https://www.torontotowtruck.com/areas-with-highest-car-accidents-in-tor…
2. Toronto Police Service. “Fatal Collisions”. https://data.torontopolice.on.ca/pages/fatalities
3. Crestview Strategy (2024). “Toronto City Council Passes Budget”. https://crestviewstrategy.com/toronto-city-council-passes-budget/
4. Toronto. “Sector-Based Emissions Inventory”. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/water-environment/environmenta…
5. European Environment Agency (2023). “Are you noticing the harmful noise around you?”. https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/editorial/are-you-noticing-the-ha…
6. CBC News (2024). “Ontario highway deaths topped 400 last year, OPP says”. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7204528
7. Simply Align Rehab. “How Dangerous Can A Car Accident Be? See Toronto Stats”. https://simplyalignrehab.com/toronto-car-accident-statistics/
8. Ontario (2023). “Expenditure Estimates for the Ministry of Transportation (2023-24)”. https://www.ontario.ca/page/expenditure-estimates-ministry-transportati…
9. Canada Energy Regulator. “Provincial and Territorial Energy Profiles – Ontario”. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-te…
10. WSP Department for Transport (2018). “LATEST EVIDENCE ON INDUCED
TRAVEL DEMAND: AN EVIDENCE
REVIEW”. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c0e5848e5274a0bf3cbe124…
11. Draaisma, Muriel (2024). “Removing bike lanes will cost at least $48M: city staff report”. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7382626 CBC News
12. Toronto. “Bloor Street West – Shaw Street to Avenue Road”. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation…
13. Christensen, Jen (2019). “250,000 deaths a year from climate change is a 'conservative estimate,' research says”. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/climate-change-health-emergency-s… CNN
14. Patrick Miner, Barbara M. Smith, Anant Jani, Geraldine McNeill, Alfred Gathorne-Hardy (2024). "Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment". https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103817.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692324000267) Journal of Transport Geography. Volume 115, 103817, ISSN 0966-6923,
15. Mortillario, Nichole (2024). “Do bike lanes really cause more traffic congestion? Here's what the research says”. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7358319 CBC News