May we have a bike lane?

Today, the government of Ontario announced legislation that, if passed, would require municipalities to receive approval from the province before installing any bike lane that would result in the removal of lanes for traffic. And in order to receive such an approval, municipalities would need to demonstrate that the proposed bike lane(s) won't have a negative impact on vehicle traffic. To be clear, municipalities should still be free to remove lanes for other purposes -- such as on-street parking -- but not for bike lanes.

There's a lot that can and will be said about this announcement. I'm also aware that I have my biases. I'm an urbanist. I live in a walkable neighborhood. And I enjoy biking, a lot -- both to get around and for fun. So I think it's clear that this announcement was designed to appeal to a specific audience: those that drive in from the suburbs and who are deeply frustrated. This is somebody doing something. Never mind that the new Eglinton LRT line isn't open yet and nobody knows when it will actually open, look over here at these annoying cyclists.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it's not going to fix our traffic. The way you make things better in a big global city with lots of demand for road space is to reduce car dependency. This is not a popular thing to say, but it's the reality. And broadly speaking, this is done in two ways. One, you provide great alternatives. And two, you price roads accordingly, through things like congestion charges. Incidentally, this also creates a virtuous cycle, because the latter raises money for the former.

In many ways, we've been getting better at number one. In 2015, Bike Share Toronto recorded 665,000 trips. Since then, ridership has increased every year. In 2023, the network recorded 5.7 million trips. And this year, the number is expected to exceed 6 million. This is not nothing. This is a lot of people riding around on bikes, some of whom may have instead opted to drive or take an Uber. And I think there's no question that this continual increase in ridership is at least partially supported by the fact that we've been creating more bike lanes.

That said, I think it's clear that to continue to move forward as a city we're going to need to start collecting far better urban data. We need to know things like how many cars and bikes are on every street and how fast they're moving. (AI can do this, right? ) This way we can continually optimize for moving the most number of people as efficiently possible. And if it turns out that I'm wrong, and clamping down on bike lanes and having more people drive is the most efficient, I'll of course accept that. Just show me the data.