🚲 Doug Ford’s plans for bike lane limits and a highway tunnel will put more cars on Toronto roads

Decades of research show the Ontario government's plans to reduce gridlock won’t work. But they will distract us from real solutions

"Restricting new bike lanes is obviously a bad idea in terms of public safety: there will always be people who, like my 20-year-old self, have no choice but to cycle on main streets. Forcing them to ride in car traffic can have deadly consequences — we’ve seen it in Belleville, Guelph, Elora, Niagara and Toronto in the last month alone. "

"It’s also not going to make Toronto’s god-awful gridlock any better. One look at the bike lanes on Bloor will tell you it probably isn’t the cyclists zipping by in a narrow lane that are causing the issue. It’s the cars filling the vast majority of the space. Bikes may be an easy strawman, but blaming them without evidence just inflames tensions on the road — and distracts us from finding real solutions.

This isn’t a matter of bikes versus cars, it’s fact: we know from decades of research that more car lanes encourage more people to drive, which makes traffic worse in the long run. It’s the same reason Ford’s other ideas for relieving traffic congestion — most recently a tunnel under Highway 401 that would likely cost billions, and two highways running through Ontario’s Greenbelt — won’t help either."

"We also know the same concept works in reverse. If you take away a lane of car traffic, it will encourage people to leave their car at home and find different ways to move around. With improved public transit options or safe bike lanes, they wouldn’t have to look too far.

Every cyclist on the road means one less person in a car, taxi or rideshare — or one less passenger on public transit, which is more crowded and less reliable than it used to be.

It’s also pretty obvious that fewer vehicles on the road means fewer emissions spewing into our air that are bad for our health and the climate.
There will always be people who need to drive to get around Toronto. But the roads and our air will be clearer for everybody if those of us who can use other options do.

So why is Ford doing this now? Maybe it’s because bike lanes have become an ideological wedge that he hopes will win him another election. Maybe because real solutions to traffic are complicated and often unpopular — like congestion pricing, which is proven to work.

Either way, the truth will be clear in a few years, when few new bike lanes are in sight through the gridlock. "

#News #Bicycle #DougFord #Biking #Onpoli #Politics #Ontario

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