Doug Ford’s attack on bike lanes will not solve the ever-present issue of gridlock; it will limit transportation options and only push us further into car dependency.
On Oct. 15, the Ontario government published a news release in which they outlined their legislative efforts towards “fighting gridlock and making life easier for drivers.”
The changes proposed include increasing the speed limit on 400-series highways to 110 km/h, opening a “potholes prevention and repair fund” for the 2025 construction season, continuing to freeze knowledge and road test fee increases, and placing restrictions on bike lanes that have “a negative impact on vehicle traffic.”
Further, the Minister of Transportation, Prabmeet Sarkaria, said that cities must justify any “cycling infrastructure” built in the past five years that meets their criteria for inconveniencing drivers.
But wouldn’t more access to bike lanes provide a transportation alternative to driving, encouraging drivers to rely less on their vehicles and thus alleviating traffic?
To Ford, this question is illogical. He says that “sanity” needs to be brought back to the construction of bike lanes, blaming them for “bringing traffic in our cities to a standstill.”
Sarkaria echoed Ford’s sentiment, blaming gridlock on the “explosion of bike lanes” installed during the pandemic “when fewer vehicles were on the road and their impacts on traffic were unclear.”
Though the government could have examined the surge of post-pandemic car travel and declines in public transit use, they choose to continue to use bike lanes as a scapegoat for Ontario’s issue of car dependency, pouring huge amounts of money into building endless highways and limiting quality alternatives to car travel.
Since the municipal government announced the proposed legislation, cyclists have pushed back against the attack on bike lanes.
On Oct. 17, a group of cyclists held a rally at High Park to show their opposition to the proposed legislation.
Michael Longfield, the Executive Director of Cycle Toronto, called the government’s proposition a “big overreach,” saying that cycling infrastructures “are really meaningful to people” and necessary to their daily commutes.
Other cycling advocates shared their fears about the safety of those who rely on cycling infrastructure.
“We cannot throw away human life for the sake of slight driving convenience,” said Jess Spieker of Friends and Families for Safe Streets.
Not only will the restrictions on bike lanes provide disproportionate inconvenience and possible danger to cyclists, but research has found that they might not even improve the issue of gridlock at all.
David Beitel of Eco-Counter, a company that works with pedestrian and cyclist data, told CBC News that eliminating bike lanes in favour of traffic lanes will create “induced demand,” meaning that commuters will opt for car travel as building more lanes will ostensibly make commuting by automobile more ideal, resulting in a circular process in which intensified gridlock returns continuously.
Dr. Shoshanna Saxe of the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering says that the concept of “induced demand” can also be applied to bike lanes, allowing for more drivers to opt for cycling if provided with the proper infrastructure, but because bikes are so small, it won’t have the same congestive problem that induced car demand will create.
Instead of considering the ways cycling infrastructure could be used as an eco-friendly and accessible way to combat gridlock, Ford chose to push Ontario further into car dependency — a decision that will not favour commuters and keep them continually stuck in traffic.