I am strongly against the…

I am strongly against the proposed legislation for the following reasons:
• The overreach of overriding municipal decision making and jurisdiction. There has been no attempt to work with Toronto to address any perceived bicycle lane issues. Instead, an entire new, unaccountable layer of bureaucracy is being created. In many cases, such as with complete Streets Eglinton, this is undoing years of collaboration, community consultation and street design, and is a slap in the face to all community members and groups in the riding, whose work is being cast aside. The government wasn’t elected on a platform or mandate to take over this area of municipal jurisdiction. It is not equipped to do so, and a partial meddling in the work of municipalities is bound to be inefficient, ineffective, and expensive.

* The removal of the bicycle lanes will waste money -- destroying millions of dollars of work, costing millions of dollars to execute, and creating a massive amount of work and expense to re-engineer and replace/create alternate cycling lanes (which the province is not offering to pay for, and which will come out of Toronto and/or Ontario taxpayer dollars). It will create traffic problems and diversions for many months and possibly years as the lanes are removed, and there is no evidence that it will have a measurable positive impact on traffic in the longer term.

• Bicycle lanes are being scapegoated for the major failures in transportation planning --such as the Crosstown, now entering its fourteenth year of construction, and the poor coordination of major construction downtown (e.g. Ontario line) – which transportation engineers have identified as the actual cause of traffic congestion in Toronto. Separated cycle lanes on main roads are a key feature of most cities that have successfully reduced congestion, as cyclists take up far less road space than cars. 83 major cities in Europe average 15% daily cycle commuting among residents, with the leaders being northern cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam (35% of daily commuters use bicycles), and cities in Sweden and Norway. In the case of the city of Toronto, present and future housing developments require that fewer new residents use cars: in 2021, city council removed minimum requirements for parking spaces in new developments. Only 22% of residents of future developments within the city will have access to parking spots. For many of these people, cycling will be the safest, fastest, and most consistent commuting option.

• This legislation will result in more cyclist injuries and deaths, which are already shockingly and unacceptably high. Cyclists deserve safe, efficient routes – yet the plan is apparently to remove such routes with no alternatives in place.

• The legislation is sexist. Women, whom research shows are for more likely to ‘trip chain,’ making multiple stops (at a school, a dry cleaner, a grocery store, etc.), are often best served by cycling. Women are less likely to have access to a car (if there is one car in a household, a man is far more likely to drive it). Women, young people, and racialized groups drive less; the government has an equal obligation to meet these groups transportation needs. More than 50% of road users are going 5 km or less, for which a car is usually inefficient. These folks are also ‘traffic.’

I sincerely hope the minister will reconsider this ill-thought out legislation. And also the ill-conceived political strategy behind it. Ontarians care about the bread and butter issues –inflation, lack of affordable housing, lack of job opportunities for youth. Diverting attention to bicycle lanes as a culture war ‘woke’ issue is a strategy most voters see through. This will be heightened if/when bicycle lanes are ripped out and gridlock continues; rather than providing a distraction, it will become an example of government failure to effectively address pressing problems.