This bill includes variety…

This bill includes variety of measures, many of which are designed to support populist ideals rather than improve the lives of people living in this province. Forcing the removal of bike lanes is a tragic mistake that must be avoided. The goal of removing congestion is understandable, but the creation of more highways and lane expansions always creates more traffic and will be an epic failure. The best way to reduce traffic is to improve access to a variety of forms of transportation.
I have had the privilege to live in multiple cities across the world this year. Coming back to Toronto was quite a shock to the system. The city of Toronto is already an incredibly car-centric city. The city prioritizes cars in the use of space and rules of the road. Streetcars in Toronto are notoriously slow and are never able to keep to any schedule. This is largely because we have decided to accept that as a part of our transportation system. If we look to Melbourne as an example, it is a city with a population greater than Toronto with a similar density. The trams (streetcars) there travel throughout the city and have a very good on-time performance compared to streetcars in Toronto. Melbourne’s tram network is also more expansive than Toronto’s. Trams largely travel on dedicated tracks with many parts of the CBD having a track for trams and a single lane for cars. Trams are also free in the city centre and the way the system is setup, trams run every few minutes in just off-peak times and as frequently as every minute in peak times at many of these stops. Running on largely dedicated tracks in the middle road and being free in the city centre makes it very easy to get around without a car and encourages people to leave their cars at home or eat their offices when travelling to meetings around the city centre. It also encourages tourists to ride the tram network reducing that demographic’s reliance on cars for getting around. Melbourne has all this and still, congestion does not kill productivity or waste people’s time. I am confident that people who drive in Melbourne are frustrated by traffic as people are in every major city but in Toronto, it often feels like your only choice is to drive. This is a decision that policy makers have forced on us here.
Montréal, another city I have been lucky to live in this year is a city that has an expansive network of divided bike lanes throughout the city. The amount of users travelling through these bike lanes regularly looms large over the traffic travelling through the car lanes next to them. While I can totally understand being wary of the notion of “if you build it they will come” but in this case we know that they will come, it’s not a fantastical aspiration. The Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition has done extensive work analyzing the traffic on bike lanes such as the one on Bloor, traffic has increased significantly, with thousands of trips occurring in these bike lanes every day, particularly in good weather. City centres shouldn’t have highways running through them. Bicycle lanes are good for business, good for adhering to Canada’s Paris Agreement obligations, and good for reducing traffic. The thought that added bureaucracy in city planning will improve traffic is a fantasy. No one elected you to create a bigger bureaucracy. Most people would say that they voted you for the exact opposite reason. Bike lanes with 100% local support would be subject to the whims of a government that may not represent any part of the area and I can only start to imagine how frustrating you might find such a situation if the provincial government started meddling in local affairs. While of course this government has been very happy to change up municipalities in ways that Doug Ford desires, it is incredibly prudent for every member of caucus to take a step back and really reflect on what this means for how our governments operate. You claim to be the party opposed to red tape and in support of businesses. Removing bike lanes, particularly in this manner does neither of these things.
Highway 413 is akin to adding more lanes to existing roads. Neither will reduce congestion. If Highway 413 is a toll-free highway then it will quickly be swallowed up by traffic and the promos of 30-35 minute reduction travel times will quickly vanish. This is what has happened after every expansion of the 401 and every expansion of every congested highway throughout the world. In the alternative, if 413 is to be a toll road it will likely succumb to the same downfall as the 407. The 407 is super under-utilized. There are so few cars on that road, and that is only because of the excessive tolls of the 407 ETR that the province has no control over because of a past government’s decision to sell-off public infrastructure. If the proposed 413 is undertaken as a toll road, it will not decrease traffic and be an expensive burden for road users or taxpayers, two groups that also of course have significant overlap.
The way to reduce traffic is give people the option to leave their cars at home. GO train expansion can reduce traffic on highways. How many people have you heard say “I hate driving on the 401” or “I hate driving in Toronto”. Many of these people would love to be able to not drive. GO transit is a wonderful base on which to build up regional commuter rail capacity. It is high on-time performance. Back in 2012, 80% of GO Transit train ridership had a car available to them but chose a train over a car. GO Transit fares are cheaper or the same price that people would pay to park their cars. GO Trains however also have the bonus of being faster than driving, especially for journeys including Toronto during rush hour, and more environmentally friendly as trains have very low emissions per passenger kilometres. On a commute of mine with a distance of over 65 km as the crow flies that included a walk of 2-30 minutes, taking the train was still faster than taking a car. I can only imagine that journeys where traffic fluctuations will make a bigger percentage impact on the journey time that this benefit would be more pronounced. I think the Provincial government should be looking to prioritize the expansion of transit so that one can choose between a car and transit without having to consider their independence. I recently concluded a 5 week internship at theatre company in downtown Toronto and was commuting from Guelph. The train got me to my internship in 2 hours door to door. The drive alone is regularly over 2 hours, not including parking and then still walking to the final destination. If I didn’t have access to a car in Guelph that I could use, I wouldn’t have been able to stay in Guelph as I would have had no way of getting into Toronto on the weekends as theatres work on Saturdays and Sundays. The bus journey between the two closest stops for me was 2 hours to 2 hours and 45 minutes but of course, busses are also subject to the whims of road traffic. That would have added between 30 and 75 minutes to my commute which isn’t a feasible addition to someone’s commute. Increasing GO train service and even some occasional weekend service would allow people taking further journeys ditch their cars and not have to rely on parking in Downtown Toronto.
Building highways never reduces traffic. Improving transit, improving bike lanes, improving pedestrian options is not only good for business and the environment but it’s also the best way to get Ontarians where they need to be faster.