Our very own Rob Attrell talked about this yesterday on Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron on 580 CFRA.
Ontario Bill 60, Part XII.1, Section 195.3 (1) says that no traffic lanes on a roadway in Ontario can be removed in full or in part to make way for a cycling lane or for any other prescribed purpose.
Even if you don’t ride a bike or care about bike lanes, the provincial government is putting their thumb on the scale and throwing off years or even decades of transportation planning in the city. This affects everything from new housing and construction, public transit, safety for vulnerable road users, the ability for the city to retain authority to make its own plans and decisions about transportation is at stake here.
This legislation is also buried deep in a massive bill that has nothing to do with bike lanes or transportation, and rightful pushback on some of the more troubling aspects of changes to tenant’s rights in the bill have already been removed. This seems to be a case of flooding the zone, stuffing a bill with all kinds of unrelated provisions, and now we heard this week they are bypassing most debate and discussion on this bill in the legislature.
If cycling safely and bike lanes aren’t your thing, this should still concern you because legislation like this is designed to be pushed through without hearing dissenting arguments, especially when it feels to me like these decisions should be up to cities, not the province. This sets a bad precedent for this and future governments.
What does Bill 60 mean for the City of Ottawa?
The main effect of Ontario Bill 60 for the City of Ottawa is that urban and suburban retrofit projects that were underway or ready to start work will be paused indefinitely.
What is a suburban retrofit and why does the city do this?
This is where a roadway already exists and traffic studies show that the roadway with a lane reduction is still capable of handling peak traffic. This type of project is by far the cheapest way to add bike lanes to an existing road, unless you happen to be digging up the whole thing already. We’re told it can cost 3-4 times more to add bike lanes beside an existing road, using the space next to it, and there are almost always other complications like buried pipes or wires to contend with.
What are the effects on city planning?
This means that any projects, including those that have been planned by the city for years but are waiting for one reason or another are being shelved or restarted. Not only does this waste a bunch of the city’s time and money, but it means if any projects are going ahead, it means any money we spend now won’t go as far as was planned. It throws the city’s whole planning process completely out of whack, including hitting climate change and transportation mode share targets in the next couple of decades as the city grows.
Can you give some specifics of this section of Bill 60?
What the provincial government is effectively doing is saying that anything that any land in the province that is currently a road in Fall 2025 shall henceforth only be used to drive cars and other vehicles around, even if that road capacity could be better used for other things.
The specific but vague language of this section of bill 60, which bans removing traffic lanes for ‘cycling lanes’ or ‘any other prescribed purpose’, seems designed to future-proof against cities taking any other steps to use road space for anything other than car travel.
To put it simply, the provincial government is creating a list of things cities are banned from doing with any land that is currently a road, and putting bike lanes at the top of the new list. The ‘any other prescribed purpose’ clause means that at any time, and without a new bill, the province can put new things on that list.
That could mean future banning of new bus lanes, multi-use paths, street festivals, pedestrian spaces, markets, parades, temporary restaurant patios, you name it.
Based on the path we’ve taken to get here, any reallocation of extra space from cars to bikes will be stopped, especially if these actions are taken in the core of Toronto where most of this legal fight has been set already, so a wide path or sidewalk that can be used for active transportation by cyclists and pedestrians next to a road would likely be swiftly added to the ban list.