As someone who lives on…

As someone who lives on Bloor St and uses it frequently to drive, walk, and cycle to various destinations, I strongly oppose the removal of the Bloor St bike lanes and any currently installed bike lanes across the City of Toronto. The idea that removing bike lanes could meaningfully contribute to any sort of traffic or gridlock reduction in the long run is nonsense, as it has been observed numerous times around the world that adding lanes of traffic only acts to increase motor vehicle use and roadway demand. What we really need to do is reduce roadway demand by offering safe, efficient alternative modes of transport to cars within our cities. Having an extensive, connected, and safe bicycle network in our cities will help increase the number of people who choose to cycle instead of drive, which is not only a much more effective way to reduce traffic congestion than adding lanes, but could also potentially save the province vast sums of money through improved public health.

What we need in the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario as a whole is a balanced, scalable approach to human mobility that includes numerous modes of transport, not just motor vehicles. It is clearly apparent that cars are the least space-efficient solution for moving people around, and in places where space is at a premium we need to be looking for more efficient, dense modes of transport such as cycling and public transportation. It's also easy to see that there's an upper limit of the number of lanes we can dedicate to motor vehicles, so when a bike lane is returned to being a motor vehicle lane, there's a very limited amount of extra capacity this offers. We would be lucky at this point if the gridlock in our city even improved at all once the proposed lanes were returned to motor vehicle traffic, after all of the spending and construction disruptions. By the time these changes took place, the new capacity offered by the restored lane of traffic would probably already be met by the induced increase in demand for this lane of traffic.

A single person in an SUV easily occupies the same space as tens of people in a bus or more than a handful of people on bikes. Every person who chooses not to drive has a much greater impact on reducing traffic than another motor vehicle lane ever could, and few people will choose to cycle if the infrastructure doesn't exist to make it a safe choice. Considering the arguments above, the numerous lives lost while cycling within the City of Toronto, and the excessive costs of removing new infrastructure to install an inferior solution, I would be appalled if the Government of Ontario pushed through this bill. The safety of all citizens should always remain the top priority, regardless of their chosen mode of transport.