I started cycle commuting to…

I started cycle commuting to my work place in the last year. A big part of the confidence and safety I have been able to build as a newer cyclist has been due to the protected cycling routes along Bloor Street and University Avenue. I’ve lived in the city my whole entire life and only at year 40 years of age did I feel comfortable enough to try this alternate mode of travel, due to the availability of safe cycling infrastructure. Cycling has proven to be fun, reliable and safer than I ever thought it could be. I have mostly been a transit user and/or car user, but the transit system has been extremely unreliable service wise lately and driving in Toronto traffic is mostly unbearable. Cycling on safe connected protected routes truly provides an alternative to the chaos to get me from point A to B.

Further, all of the literature that I have come across has not linked bike lanes as a major contributor to traffic. In this specific case, it’s my understanding that the majority of the Bloor Street and University Avenue bike lanes were curb lanes typically occupied by parked vehicles - therefore car traffic was not free flowing in that space previously so how is removal of these bike lanes going to reduce vehicular traffic ? It’s illogical and irresponsible.

Biking is an affordable travel mode, provides health and wellness benefits, and ultimately reduces the capacity issues on public transit or vehicular traffic on the roadway (people like myself who typically took transit or drove a car are biking instead of creating traffic in those modes). Bikeways provide a safe way for those who choose to cycle to arrive alive. It’s a massive step backward to remove the connected cycling network that has been recently established and there will be more fatalities or serious injuries.

This bill also is a major overstep of municipalities being able to make decisions and plan the infrastructure in their right of way. It also does not align with planning policies currently in place and supported by the province - for example new residential developments (high density condominiums) typically have fewer parking spaces than units, which assumes that owners/tenants will be using non-car modes of travel. Overall, it’s comical to me that this bill has been seriously proposed and is requiring unnecessary effort from municipal staff who have to respond and comment on it.

Toronto is a major city and while people (myself included) remember driving downtown without much issue, this is no longer realistic with how many people and density that has been established in recent years. Nobody drives into Manhattan or Paris or London anymore. Similar to these cities, Toronto doesn’t have room to build more car lanes, so we need to be thinking about how the existing roadway can be balanced for all types of users in various modes; pedestrians, cyclists, transit and cars.