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Originally Posted by Build.It
Dougie actually being a conservative for once. Would be nice if he'd start being a conservative when it comes to housing as well.
Regarding the bike lanes - there are any number of parallel roads that the cities can install these lanes on. If they weren't so adament about removing car lanes from main thoroughfares, and were more responsible about where they place these lanes, then Ford wouldn't be forced to step in like this.
FYI - people who drive typically come in from further away and have higher paying jobs. If you make it difficult for them to get downtown, those employers are eventually going to be forced to move to the suburbs.
It's only a small minority of people who want us to be like Europe. The vast majority of people just want to get to where we're going and don't want to be a sweaty mess when we get there. Cars aren't a bad thing.
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What's conservative about this? Would conservatives not prefer smaller, more decentralized government? A centralized, provincial bureaucracy stepping in to change the design of a city's street (while spending the taxpayer's dollars doing it) is the exact opposite of that. Remember, when it came to legalizing 4-unit apartments across the province, Ford is the same guy that said municipalities should decide what is good for their own communities.
A few points in regards to the bike lanes:
- Streets like Bloor and Yonge are not and have never been high-speed, high-capacity vehicular thoroughfares. They function primarily as local neighbourhood commercial strips, with the vast majority of traffic being in the subways below; while most street-level traffic are pedestrians. These aren't highways used to whisk suburbanites rapidly into the core.
- As I noted in my previous post, due to the configuration of most sections of these streets, they didn't even lose traffic lanes with the introduction of bike lanes. It was a parking lane that has now been replaced with 2 additional (bike) traffic lanes. These streets are now able to move more people. And per the City's own studies, car travel times haven't increased as a result.
- Bloor St. in particular is a very well-used bike route. At Bloor & Spadina for example, depending on the season & time of day, bikes comprise between 16% (in winter) to 43% of all vehicles on the road. Thousands of cyclists use these routes - with or without separated lanes.
- Cycling volumes have increased on all of these routes after the bike lanes were installed. Remember - every one of those people on a bike, or walking on the sidewalk, or taking transit is someone who isn't driving. Giving people more options for getting around means less cars on the street. As a motorist, it makes my life easier when there are fewer other people driving. When everyone else is driving, I'm more likely to be sitting in traffic.
- If you're at all familiar with Toronto's street grid, you'd know that there aren't any continuous side streets that parallel the length of Bloor or Yonge that could provide a realistic alternate bike route.
- These bike lanes are widely supported by local residents and businesses, including the Bloor Annex BIA. The opposition largely comes from non-resident, non-taxpaying suburbanites - should their occasional convenience outweigh the needs & desires of the actual communities that are affected?