regarding part 12 municipal…

regarding part 12 municipal by-laws and bike lanes:
I am writing as a citizen of Ontario to inform the legislative assembly that I oppose this bill.

This bill suggests to manage municipal roads which are normally outside the provincial jurisdiction by requiring provincial approval of bike lanes that would remove a traffic lane. By mandating approval for the design of municipal road the provincial office would add an additional layer of red tape, not remove it for the 444 municipalities in Ontario.

Bike lane projects already take years to implement without this additional layer of provincial oversight which cannot be better equipped to understand either the traffic aspects (as the plans are already reviewed by traffic engineers through environmental assessments) or the local aspects (as the EAs and detailed designs are reviewed by local council and local people) than the layers already in place. If approved these plans may still take years to be built due to the time for detailed design, relocation of utilities and procurement construction. In essence, the construction of bike lanes face the same struggles that the ministry is attempting to alleviate in this bill for the priority highways.

My municipality has just approved an Active Transportation Masterplan that oversees the next 20 years of active transportation in the city and would build up bike lanes on more than 50 unique roads, often requiring the reallocation of parking lanes or travel lanes (e.g. reducing 4 lanes to three including a dedicated turning lane, to fit bidirectional bike travel in the roadway). I think I live in a pretty average municipality, if every municipality was like mine, that would be a conservatively estimated 22,200 files to look through. Or 1,110 a year if it was evenly spread over 20 years. How many people will need to be hired to review these projects?

Designated bike lanes are a crucial aspect of the design of complete streets and vision zero policies that improve the safe operation on highways (roads, avenues, streets, boulevards, squares, bridges). Separated bike lanes improve the safety for bikes, pedestrians, and cars. Injury risk for cyclists is reduced by 30%-40% when using a bike lane (e.g., Harris et al., 2013; Paolos et al., 2015). This improved safety increases the use of active transportation which reduced traffic and gridlock. When people feel unsafe, they are less likely to choose active transportation (or public transportation) and thus will lead to more people in cars and thus more gridlock (Rérat & Schmassmann, 2024).

Removing bike lanes that are already built would be a huge waste of this time, effort, and money in addition to the time, effort, and money it would take to rebuild the road. When accounting for the risk to safety by removing bike lanes, and the increased vehicle traffic by removing bike users, it would be ill-advised to remove a bike lane that has already been built and is being used. Any money that might be used to remove a bike lane would be better spent investing in public transportation which could actually reduce gridlock by removing single-occupancy vehicle traffic.

Provincial oversight of bike lanes is not related to designating priority highway projects or required for the "building highways faster act". This aspect will slow down the construction and improvement of highways and I believe will work to increase gridlock not reduce it. Thank you for your time.

References:
Harris MA, Reynolds CCO, Winters M, et al. (2013). Comparing the effects of infrastructure on bicycling injury at intersections and non-intersections using a case–crossover design
Injury Prevention 19, 303-310.
**This study was done in Toronto and Vancouver

Poulos et al. (2015). Accident Analysis & Prevention, 78, 29-38.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2015.02.009

Rérat & Schmassmann, (2024). Build it and they will come? The effects of a new infrastructure on cycling practices and experiences. Transportation Research & Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2024.101121