Eliminating bike lanes is a…

Eliminating bike lanes is a shortsighted and expensive attempt at a solution to downtown congestion. I live in midtown Toronto and use bike lanes regularly. Bike lanes have allowed me to introduce urban biking to my children, giving them more independence in the city and offering them a healthy active way to get around. Sometimes I drive through the city as well in these same proposed areas where the removal of bike lanes is being proposed. While I hear oftentimes complaints about the traffic and sometimes I hear the bike lanes blamed, I have not experienced any change due to the bike lanes. In fact traffic seems to move more fluidly and on an organized fashion. The congestion comes from bottlenecks due to construction, like at Avenue Rd and Balmoral; or Yonge and St Clair, not because of the bike lanes. All of this without even considering the environmental costs of removal bike lanes. I would be so disappointed to see the bike lanes threatened as their benefits to so many people far outweigh the imagined costs relating to traffic.