I'm writing to express my…

I'm writing to express my disgust and anger at Premier Ford's move to remove bike lanes and interfere in municipal matters. Removing bike lanes and requiring provincial approval for new ones is short-sighted, unbecomingly petty, dangerous and goes against plentiful evidence from Toronto and other global cities that find that cycling infrastructure improves safety, encourages more people to use a bike as their primary mode of transit and helps in the fight to lower greenhouse gas emissions and meet the world's climate goals. Premier Ford and Minister Sakaria's talking points that bike lanes worsen traffic and could lead to slower emergency response times are ideological garbage that are entirely unsupported by the facts.

City of Toronto data has found that streets with bike lanes saw only fractional increases in commute times for drivers, of one minute or less on average. There's quite simply no data that indicates making dedicated space on the road for cyclists is a hindrance to drivers. I might suggest that Premier Ford, who is notably targeting the Bloor bike lanes that intersect with his own commute to work, is just jealous to see cyclists zooming past him every morning. Perhaps if he got on a bike himself he might get to Queen's Park faster.

Furthermore, Toronto's emergency services have repeatedly said that bike lanes do not hinder their response times, and the data proves this out. According to the city, emergency response times on Yonge Street — one of the streets with protected bike lanes Premier Ford is speciously targeting for removal — were 36 seconds less than the average citywide increase in response times. Paul Raftis, then-head of Toronto’s paramedic service, told city council in 2022 there was “no evidence of emergency response impacts as a result of the midtown installation.” Further, at a public meeting in October, Toronto Fire Deputy Chief Jim Jessop told the meeting the fire department has not seen an increase in response times, based on international standards, in the last few years due to the bike lanes.

Despite Premier Ford and Minister Sakaria's assertions, bike lanes may also contribute to reducing traffic by encouraging more people to ride their bike instead of take their car to work. According to a Toronto study of the city's two most popular bike lanes, cyclist volumes increased by more than 1,000 per cent in 2016 on some stretches compared to 2013, before lanes were installed, and 94 per cent of these riders were likely to be new cyclists shifting from car, foot or transit, rather than existing bike commuters pulled from other routes. If more drivers who also enjoy cycling have a safe, protected and speedy way to get to work, they'll take it, and that will remove more traffic from the road. (This also has an added benefit of significantly reducing GHG emissions: in Paris, thanks to the dramatic expansion of cycling infrastructure and closure of whole roads to vehicle traffic in favour of cycling, car ownership has fallen from 60% of city residents to 35% within the past two decades and the city's GHG emissions dropped by 20% in that time frame. Between 2020 and 2021 alone cyclist traffic increased 70%. Those policies, by the way, are WILDLY popular.)

Premier Ford, for all he says he cares about reducing traffic, does not seem to be aware of the actual root causes of traffic in the city: ongoing construction projects, pandemic recovery, seasonal traffic shifts, and also important and much-needed traffic calming measures, including lower speed limits, that improve safety for vulnerable road users.

Removing bike lanes will endanger cyclists like myself. Toronto is already a scary place to be on two wheels: this year alone six cyclists have been killed by drivers, and a peer-reviewed paper by UK researchers examining Toronto Police Services and emergency department visits data found that between 2016 and 2021, more than 30,000 Toronto cyclists went to the ER due to road injuries. Every single day — and that is no exaggeration — I see Toronto drivers behave in ways that are highly reckless if not outright illegal. In the five years I have lived in Toronto I have personally witnessed multiple cyclists being hit or doored by drivers. While drivers often don't respect the bike lanes we do have, protected lanes are an important tool in keeping vulnerable road users safe. Premier Ford used to know this himself — when he went for a bike ride with Jagmeet Singh on TVO's Political Blind Date in 2017, he expressed concern for the parts of his ride where he was unprotected by a bike lane, and vowed to keep cyclists safe.

Finally, I would like to note that the Highway Traffic Act explicitly allows cyclists to bike in the middle of traffic lanes if it is not feasible or safe for them to keep to the right. On many Toronto streets, keeping to the right puts vulnerable road users between parked cars and active traffic — putting them at risk not only of drivers passing on their left but of being doored by drivers getting out of their parked cars who aren't paying attention, or hit by cars pulling out of their parking spots. Any reasonable cyclist would choose to take up the lane of traffic for their own safety. If Premier Ford thinks traffic is untenable now, just wait until cars are forced to slow to the speed of cyclists. Some food for thought!