I am a daily cyclist whose…

I am a daily cyclist whose experience in Toronto has greatly improved since the expansion of bike lanes along key corridors 5 years ago. I have found the roads to be safer and easier to navigate with separate, divided bike lanes; I urge this government to keep and allow for the expansion of these diversified, completer streets.

Local roads have always been the jurisdiction of municipalities as they are best positioned to learn about, serve, and customize street building approaches to meet the needs of their community. This is not an issue where top-down limitations on road use is in the best interest of Ontarians. Local conditions, evidence, and support (or lack thereof) for alterations to streets should dictate changes to our local streets; bike lanes, transit priority lanes, curbside patios, and other uses for our streets should be considered and implemented on a case by case, city by city scale.

Prioritizing cars over all other road users is a shortsighted and foolhearty approach for solving congestion. First off, Ontario's own experts have found bike lanes do not add to congestion - it can be much more attributable to construction. Secondly, even if this were to reduce commuting times, induced demand would only bring more cars into our cities to take advantage - thereby congesting streets all the more and worsening the tailpipe emissions spewing into the air.

This Bill prioretizes the wrong goals and goes about solving them in an ineffective way that will satisfy no one and worsen the experience of all road users in the long term. I urge this government to drop (or at least reconceptualize) this bill instead of using bike lanes as a strawman scapegoat to blame Torontonians traffic woes on.