Editorial: Killing Bike Lanes, Killing Progress: Ontario and its Car-First Agenda

In a move that is both backward and blind to reality, the Ontario provincial government, led by car-loving Premier Doug Ford, has decided it will be the final arbiter of bike lane construction in cases where a lane of car traffic would be removed.

It is a massive overreach to tell individual cities how to build roads in their communities. It’s also just plain dumb.

The first lesson for anyone planning traffic is that the single-occupancy vehicle is the most expensive and least efficient way of moving people. Ever. Roads cost billions. More roads create more cars. What more road construction fails to accomplish is reducing traffic congestion. See: Los Angeles et al.

But those are just the facts, and this government seems willing to ignore those pesky things to score political points with its suburban-loving constituents.

In a recent editorial for the Toronto Star, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, Prabmeet Sarkaria, explains how he gets in his single-occupancy vehicle, like so many others, and drives to his job in Toronto at Queen’s Park. He is, in short, part of the problem. He is traffic. He is congestion. He is why the roads are overrun with steel boxes.

He says bike lanes hurt businesses, especially when street parking is altered or removed. He says bike lanes slow emergency vehicles. He says a lot of things. What he doesn’t say is how he came to this conclusion or what data he used. Why? There isn’t any.

Every study, including those conducted right in Toronto along Bloor Street West, shows that bike lanes actually end up being a net positive for local businesses. Other studies conducted by the city itself show that bike lanes do not slow emergency vehicles.

Bike lanes are affordable to construct and maintain and are great at moving people if they are built safely—ideally separated by a physical curb and kept clean, especially in the winter. Cities that construct such infrastructure see an increase in cyclists. Look at the shining beacon of hope in Copenhagen, where well over half of all trips in the city are by bicycle.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford

We want that modal shift away from single-occupancy vehicles to other methods: public transit, bikes, e-bikes, scooters, walking. If we don’t have that infrastructure in place, we are doomed to congestion hell forever. Guaranteed.

If a person wants to hop into their SUV from Brampton, where Sarkaria lives—and I’m just going to go ahead and assume a healthy majority, if not all, of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario drives around in single-occupancy SUVs—to drive into the city in the least efficient and most expensive way possible, why am I footing the bill?

Street parking is, again and again, shown to be a ridiculous waste of money. Why should I, a Toronto resident and taxpayer, fund this inefficient use of public space? If a business is so reliant on a person in a car driving to its location, it should pay for a parking space for its customers. Why should I pay for it?

The city elected a mayor who rides a bicycle daily, even in winter. Clearly, the majority want her and every other cyclist to be safe. That’s one of the reasons we voted for her and others who support these initiatives. That’s how democracy works, and it would be great if Premier Ford learned that lesson.

Canada’s population has exploded by a million people over the last year. Hundreds of thousands are relocating to Ontario and, apparently, will continue to do so. If anyone thinks that more roads and traffic lanes will stop congestion, they have completely lost the plot. The only possible way to deal with this problem is through smart, people-first planning: creating nodes where jobs and people come together through appropriate zoning and incentives, massive investment in public transit (Paris, for example, just announced a massive four-line Metro expansion covering 200 kilometers), serious investment in safe alternative transportation methods, and making people pay for the privilege of driving single-occupancy vehicles via tolls and congestion taxes.

What the Ontario PC party is doing is the opposite. Yes, Ontario is building some rapid transit, but not nearly enough, and what is being built is years behind schedule. But if the status quo continues or worsens by curtailing the expansion of safe cycling infrastructure, every dollar invested in mass transit is wasted—especially if the province continues to promote urban sprawl development, particularly on the Ontario Greenbelt and local farmland. It makes zero sense and ensures failure.

It isn’t difficult to look at the big picture and the facts—if one actually lived in a world where reality, facts, and common sense inform decisions instead of petty politics, anecdotes, and bias.

If I might make a suggestion to the good Ontario minister: Read something. Ask the experts. Ride a bike. Take transit. Don’t impose old-fashioned, out-of-date ideas on a system that can’t handle any more failure.