A provision buried deep in Ontario’s new omnibus legislation, Bill 60 (the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025), is a direct, immediate threat to road safety in Ottawa. It undermines years of approved local planning, from the Official Plan down and effectively freezes the City’s ability to build bike lanes that would result in a reduction of car lanes.
Contacting the Premier’s office about this yesterday, the person on the phone was not even aware there is a section about bike lanes in this bill, heavily suggesting Ford’s office has not heard from Ontarians about this.
The provision, Part XII.1, Section 195.3 (1), explicitly prohibits a municipality from reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes for “A bicycle lane” without direct permission from the provincial government. It also includes language banning the removal of vehicle lanes for “any other prescribed purpose”, which effectively means that if cities try to navigate loopholes to remove traffic lanes, those loopholes can be closed without further legislation.
Prohibition re reduction of lanes
195.3 (1) Except as permitted by the regulations, a municipality shall not, by by-law or otherwise, reduce or permit a reduction in the number of marked lanes available for travel by motor vehicles on a highway or a portion of a highway under the municipality’s jurisdiction and control for any of the following purposes:
1. A bicycle lane.
2. Any other prescribed purpose.
For anyone who navigates this city by bike, the implication is clear: this bill kills any future bike lane retrofits.
These retrofits are the single most important tool Ottawa has to make our streets safer for people outside of a vehicle. They are how the city has decided to build a connected grid of safe, separated bike lanes across the city, because it is MUCH cheaper and easier than redesigning an entire roadway, curbs, sidewalks and all. This bill stops that work cold.
Here’s a partial list of planned bike infrastructure projects that would immediately be prohibited or have already been put on ice indefinitely: sections of Orléans Boulevard, Gladstone-Gilmour bikeway, Kent Street, Slater Street, Albert Street. Expect this list to get longer.
Threatened bike infrastructure: Orleans Boulevard, Gladstone-Gilmour bikeway, Kent Street, Slater Street, Albert Street, and more.
This provision of Bill 60, Part XII.1, Section 195.3 (1) is a direct veto on Ottawa’s own democratically approved plans, including the Transportation Master Plan and the Official Plan. These documents, built on years of public consultation and data, explicitly call for “complete streets” and reallocating road space to build the cycling network our city has committed to.
This isn’t just a “bikes vs. cars” issue. It’s an assault on municipal autonomy in transportation planning and data-driven safety planning overall. Our local engineers and planners know which streets are dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. They have the data to show where a lane reduction for a separated bike lane will calm traffic, reduce collisions, and make the street safer for everyone—including drivers and pedestrians. They have also studied traffic patterns extensively to demonstrate that car traffic will not be significantly affected by these modifications to the roadway.
This bill could have much broader consequences. It contains language suggesting pending threats to anything else from bus lanes, to pedestrianized spaces, and more.
Bill 60 substitutes a distant ministry’s political whim for our local, evidence-based decisions on road safety. It won’t accomplish its stated goal (fix Toronto’s traffic problems), and it affects not only cycling safety, but the independence of municipalities in Ontario as well.
Furthermore, it’s fiscally reckless. Our roads are expensive to maintain. Forbidding the city from retrofitting an overbuilt, four-lane road into a safer and more accessible two-lane road configuration with wider sidewalks and bike lanes is bad asset management. It locks in a costly, inefficient, and dangerous design from bygone decades, and prevents us from using our rights-of-way and road infrastructure to move more people, more safely, and more affordably.
This provision is flying under the radar. We need to act now.
PLEASE contact your MPP, Minister Sarkaria and the Premier to tell them to remove Part XII.1, Section 195.3 from Bill 60. You can also call the Premier’s office directly here.