Not all city progress looks…

Not all city progress looks like making cars move around faster. Vibrancy in a community and progress in a city looks like getting around in different ways, and providing different ways of access. In order for communities to grow, for cities to grow, sometimes old ways and old things need to be revised. For instance, North American cities are built around cars, and how cars move around. This worked for a time when cities were smaller and farther apart, but now that Ontario is growing and the population is only increasing, we need to rethink the way our roads are being built, and improve on how roads have been built previously.

I believe that issues like car accidents and car-related deaths, slow moving traffic (caused by cars), can be resolved by creating variance in how people move around, and by creating safer streets with designated bike lanes. It has been studied and proven time and time again (and yet is still ignored by the Ontario government), that creating roadways that slow down cars and provide people with different ways of getting around actually improve traffic conditions and safety for all people and all methods of transporting around the city.

Toronto, specifically is a city where I frequently bike around, and personally have felt the dangers of needing to get to a location that doesn't have a protected bike lane for the entire route. Cars that can swerve into your lane, people who don't give you enough space on the road or slow down when passing, etc, all make you feel less safe on the road and less likely to want to move around the city.

When family has visited me, we have used the Toronto Bike Share, and used the current network of bike lanes to tour the city and they had much more fun doing so than riding in a car or the TTC network. For visitors to the city, sometimes these options also prevent people from seeing all that Toronto has to offer. And for those of us who don't always feel safe on public transit or in car share vehicles like Uber (e.g. sexual assault, drug use, etc) sometimes cycling feels like the better option (even when safety is a risk there too).

My hope for Ontario is that they look to places that have improved on public life by incorporating all these ways of transiting around the city, and realistically approach the issue, looking at studies, looking at how people actually get around, looking at what is SAFEST for all the citizens that live in the places the government is responsible for. If they are committed to safety, they would prioritize installing more bike lanes and improve on the design of OUR roads for the sake of OUR safety and OUR lives.

Thank you.