This bill, if passed, would…

This bill, if passed, would endanger the lives of cyclists and it makes no economic sense.

There's only so much you can do to stay safe as a cyclist: take a defensive cycling course, keep your bike tuned, wear a helmet, and wear reflective gear and put lights on your bike when it's dark.

However, this bill will make it harder for anyone to be a cyclist. Here are some of my stories about cycling safety.

I hit some black ice in an underpass in early winter one year and fell off my bike. A car slowed down, rolled down the window, but rather than ask me whether I was okay, the driver yelled at me and said I was an idiot.

Another time, I saw a woman cyclist get knocked off her bike in front of me because a driver opened his door without looking. She was a grown woman but she cried because of the pain of the broken shoulder.

I live five minutes from Ottawa City Hall, where a man was killed in broad daylight by a van crossing the bike path. It was eery knowing it could have been me or any of the hundreds of cyclists that use that route daily. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/guilty-plea-hit-and-run-death-cyc…

You assume everyone has access to a car. The average annual cost of car ownership in Canada is $16,644. I live in downtown Ottawa, where half the people don't own a car. I'm a woman, and women are less likely to own a car.

Your economic argument also doesn't make sense either. A study by The Centre for Active Transportation of Bloor Street in Toronto—a section that Premier Ford wants to remove—shows that when car parking was replaced by bike lanes, “monthly customer spending and number of customers served by merchants both increased.” This is why the Bloor Annex Business Improvement Association has opposed Ford’s legislation.

The removal of the lanes is plain wasteful. Sadly, wasteful transportation spending has become the norm for this government, which is advancing a $6–$10 billion highway that will have little to no beneficial effect and recently expressed a desire to build a tunnel under Highway 401.