10/23/2025
Copy of letter sent to MPP Charmaine Williams by BikeBrampton Chair David Laing.
Hello Minister Williams,
I received a copy of the recent letter you sent to your constituents regarding the results of a bike lane survey your office sent out this past summer. As an advocate for active transportation, the results were disappointing although certainly not surprising. Most Brampton residents today use the car as their primary mode of transportation. I assume that they are primarily concerned with the comfort and convenience of their commute and therefore see little value in supporting alternative transportation modes. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Brampton needs bike lanes as part of its transportation strategy. Transportation experts in Brampton and other municipalities across Ontario, and around the world, agree that cycling must play an important role in the future of transportation to avoid gridlock, to say nothing about improving health outcomes and reducing climate emissions. A safe active transportation network is a key requirement to encourage more cycling behaviour. Bike lanes are the only practical option that will create that network in a timely and economically responsible fashion.
Dayle and I, with our cycling buddies just returned from an 11-day cycling trip to Montreal and the Eastern Townships. We spent three full days touring throughout the city by bike, Mont Royal, Old Montreal, Lachine, Ville Marie, Chinatown, and Little Italy, among other places. It’s a great way to experience the city at a human scale. And cyclists were everywhere! Rain, shine, cold, blustery; they were still riding.
Montreal is about twice as populous as Brampton at 1.75M people. For sure it is more compact and denser. But its climate is colder than Brampton’s and its terrain is considerably hillier. Yet Montreal has a 15% cycling mode share compared to Brampton at less than 2%. Montreal’s higher cycling mode share is because of decades of investment in cycling infrastructure and support of a cycling culture including a public bike-share program. Montreal has an almost complete cycling network. In our travels, we experienced a few multi-use paths, but mostly it was dedicated on-street bicycle lanes, many of them barrier protected. Rarely were we forced to ride with traffic on busy streets.
Contrast that with Brampton that only started making real investments in a cycling network in 2019 and only installed its first protected bike lane in 2023. It’s Active Transportation Master Plan, which you supported as a member of City Council, was passed in 2019. That plan called for a whole network on on-street bike lanes to be installed throughout the city. Between 2019 and 2023 Brampton built over 40km of dedicated bike lanes plus installed dozens of depressed curbs along with signs and bicycle signals. BikeBrampton, along with the city’s active transportation advisory committee dedicated much time and effort to encourage a cycling community and a cycling culture. That effort, along with the city’s investments were beginning to pay off. Rates of cycling more than doubled across the city according to different transportation mode share surveys between 2020 and 2023.
For sure, the installation of bike lanes along some streets resulted in resident complaints including, loss of on-street parking, loss of right-hand turn lanes, loss of street travel lanes, perceived increase in travel times, perceived impact on driver convenience. No jurisdiction that I am aware of, neither in North America nor in Europe has successfully implemented bicycle infrastructure without debate and public complaint. Dialogue, adjustments to infrastructure, education, and time to get used to something new; all these are required to quell complaints, get people using the bike lanes and to get the desired results.
Bike lanes are not the cause of traffic congestion, but they do encourage more cycling behaviour, and they do save cyclists’ lives. Jurisdictions that exhibit patience in their pursuit of an active transportation strategy are now enjoying safer streets, higher volumes of people and goods movement, (normalized for road capacity and population density), a healthier population and declining carbon emissions from transportation. These are the facts that the Ontario government is choosing to ignore. In so doing, this government has put a chill on active transportation development across the province and has set back the timeline for realizing benefits by a decade or more.
What is disappointing is that you are paying so much attention to this issue given your historical interest in safe streets and the plethora of provincial jurisdiction issues that are clamouring for your attention. For example, a second Brampton hospital, the completion of Riverwalk and the lifting of the downtown special policy area development restrictions, the rise in drug related homelessness and violent crime. Instead, you and your government are exerting considerable effort to discourage active transportation in the province, through legislation such as Bill 212, opposition to speed enforcement cameras in community safety zones, and distributing non-objective surveys that only serve to fan the flames of resident discontent about the recently installed bike lanes. At the same time, your government is enacting policies to encourage more driving behaviour including reduction of gas taxes and eliminating licensing fees which will only contribute to more congestion, poorer health outcomes, and higher carbon emissions.
What is the strategy this government is trying to implement? I can’t believe the desire is for more gridlock, more pollution and streets that are less safe for everyone. Where then is the plan? The cynic in me wants to say that the plan is simply great politics. The cycling community, although growing, is still relatively small, and has little influence as a voting block. Cyclists, therefore, are a convenient scapegoat for driver frustration over increasing congestion. And the removal of bike lanes, particularly those, that appear to be underutilized, is a visible symbol of government taking action to increase road capacity for cars. Of course, we know that the issue is more complicated than that but offering simple solutions to complex problems is the nature of populist politics.
Can you quell my cynicism by helping me understand your government’s long-term transportation plan for this province? And why are you spending efforts focusing public attention on making life less viable for vulnerable road users instead of helping solve the province’s public healthcare crisis. I’m happy to meet with you to discuss these issues at your convenience.
Many thanks,
David Laing - Chair, BikeBrampton
416-402-3778
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