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+--- Thread: Cycling in Waterloo Region (/showthread.php?tid=186)
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RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Viewfromthe42 - 10-29-2015
It's similar to how the Conservatives lost the election. In Whaley's comment, what I hear is the recognition that the car is now not the only acceptable option. It is still what most people will choose, but we now welcome diversity and other choices. To Outhit and D'Amato, like Canadians referring to Jews in the thirties and forties, "none is too many." Shame.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - panamaniac - 10-29-2015
(10-29-2015, 03:03 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: It's similar to how the Conservatives lost the election. In Whaley's comment, what I hear is the recognition that the car is now not the only acceptable option. It is still what most people will choose, but we now welcome diversity and other choices. To Outhit and D'Amato, like Canadians referring to Jews in the thirties and forties, "none is too many." Shame.
Rein it in there, cowboy!
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Markster - 10-29-2015
(10-29-2015, 02:31 PM)ookpik Wrote: What did you expect from D'Amato -- less bias than Outhit?
One example that says volumes about how these dinosaurs "think":
Quote:After a special bike crossing signal was installed at Erb and Peppler streets in Waterloo earlier this month, Coun. Mark Whaley actually said: "The era of the car as king is over in Waterloo." That's pie-in-the-sky thinking if ever I heard it.
Really, Mark should have said "The era of the car as tyrannical dictator is over in Waterloo"
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - MidTowner - 10-29-2015
(10-29-2015, 03:08 PM)panamaniac Wrote: Rein it in there, cowboy!
Yeah...Viewfromthe42, I have to say that I agree with what you said, but the analogy you made is easy to take exception to...
I read D'Amato's piece, and wish I hadn't. Her job is, I guess, to get attention, but there was nothing in there I hadn't read before a number of times.
It's hard to understand how people feel entitled to comment on things they don't understand just because they happen to have a position at the newspaper. The notion of induced demand is well established. And it's been proven that the majority of people (I'm included among them) will not bicycle in the absence of bicycling infrastructure. When D'Amato points out that only 1.1 percent of residents reported biking to work most of the time, that's an argument in favour of more accommodations for bicycling, not against it.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Canard - 10-29-2015
I agree with this article.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Drake - 10-29-2015
I wonder if D'Amato got someone else to write this article. All of the previous ones I have read did not impress me.
I regret however that I find myself agreeing with some of the points she has made. The example of the police being blind to dangerous and illegal operation by cyclists is accurate and I would like to see it change.
The quote of the councillor is no doubt taken out of context and framed for sensationalism. This type of tabloid tactic is purely to generate advertising revenue and is part of what is wrong with modern journalism in my opinion. New thread?
The reference to alleged historic Canadian opinions about Jews is wrong and I am not seeing how it helps this discussion or our community.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - clasher - 10-29-2015
Police seem to ignore drivers that roll through stop signs and drive through amber and red lights. Speed limits aren't really considered anything but a bare minimum by most drivers... anytime I go the speed limit I find myself getting tail-gated. Watching the police ride their bicycles around downtown is pretty funny, they ride two abreast all the time, hop on and off the sidewalks with impunity and don't seem to have decent lights on their bike Setting up speed traps certainly will net far more ticket revenue than any bicycle blitz would. The gov't should add bicycle training to the school curriculum, I remember learning the rules of the road for bikes when I was a kid but I think it was because I was a safety patrol or something like that, not a whole-class type of thing.
That signal that she mentions on Erb in Waterloo is just a modification of an existing pedestrian signal that was already there... the pedestrian signal took 20-60 seconds (so it seemed) to activate and most people can cross the street before the signal would change so the only thing that old signal did was stop traffic long after pedestrians and cyclists had cleared the crossing.
Since most everyone pays property taxes that pay for local roads one could probably make the case that car drivers are subsidized by bike riders that don't own cars.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - tomh009 - 10-29-2015
(10-29-2015, 10:01 PM)clasher Wrote: Police seem to ignore drivers that roll through stop signs and drive through amber and red lights.
Picking on only part of your post -- police definitely ticket drivers who run red lights. Entering an intersection on amber is legal, though. (Rolling stops are not legal but endemic everywhere ... here the safety is really a matter of degree and speed.)
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Viewfromthe42 - 10-30-2015
I apologize for offending.
I get frustrated that we just saw a national election turn and (thankfully) defeat those who would spread non-accommodation, and couldn't help but think of all the ways they could further stigmatize minorities.
To support minorities, to support choice, we have to allow that choice to be made. In supporting cycling, we have to have safe, convenient ways to cycle. Count the lane-km, current replacement value, and annual spending on roads vs cycling infrastructure, and you'll find that it's still vastly in the favour of cars, whether the ratio is 88:1 or not. Not to mention that in order to bring balance to a situation where one side has long since been ignored, it *has* to be given disproportionate attention until balance is achieved, or else it never can be.
For some, supporting their choice to drive rather than use other modes of transportation is to make sure that no other choice is supported. That's how my father views his metropolis, believes that bike infrastructure wasn't there when the city started, and should only ever be put into greenfield development (i.e. never connected to anything, lest it oppress drivers. No, I'm not kidding). It's why my employer pays for parking lot expansion onsite, and buys offsite parking from multiple neighbours to accommodate drivers, but it was a fight against all levels of management to put in a single bike rack into an unusable corner to allow for up to six cyclists to no longer have their bikes stolen from trees or blocking hallways.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - MidTowner - 10-30-2015
(10-29-2015, 10:01 PM)clasher Wrote: Since most everyone pays property taxes that pay for local roads one could probably make the case that car drivers are subsidized by bike riders that don't own cars.
People who drive on local roads more often are subsidized by people who drive on local roads less often. I think we can safely say that most cyclists are also car-owners, but every kilometer they bicycle is one kilometer they did not drive, and that's not reflected in the taxes they pay.
How roads are funded is widely misunderstood. I had an argument with someone not too long ago about bike lanes (and whether he was entitled to block one when needed with his car...) and the argument I received was that "bicyclists don't pay taxes, so they don't pay for the roads." When I replied that there's no way to know if a cyclist is a property owner paying property taxes directly, or a renter paying them in directly, most are paying taxes that fund the roads, the reply was that cyclists don't pay gas taxes. What's to make of that.
In so many ways, heavy drivers are subsidized. But one clear way is that a (large) proportion of your property taxes go to pay for roads, and most of the roads make little or no accommodation for any users besides cars. And the amount you pay doesn't change based on how much or little you use those roads.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - MidTowner - 02-12-2016
Streetsblog yesterday had a post asking "Where are the best places for protected intersections in your city?"
"Protected intersections" are something fairly new, and apparently they've only recently been implemented (under this nomenclature, anyway) a handful of times only recently in North America. If I understand correctly, they're not too complicated: at an intersection where two protected bicycle lanes or paths meet, the bicycle lane (and sidewalk) is diverted slightly so it is offset to the intersection by a couple of meters. Motorists don't have to be trusted to shoulder check to make sure they're not about to cut off a cyclist when making a right-hand turn, since the potential conflict point is slightly outside of the intersection, when the car has already made its turn, and in front of the car, where the driver is looking.
Anyway, the answer to the question posed in the headline of the article is "King at University." University Avenue needs real protected bicycle lanes, and so does King. That's a dangerous intersection for all users, and a redesign to make it friendlier to cyclists would be called for.
(Runners-up are Erb and Weber and Bridgeport and Weber, for the same reason minus the very heavy student population.)
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Pheidippides - 02-23-2016
I thought I overheard on the bus that regional council voted against the staff recommendation of buffered bike lanes on University between Erb and Westmount and for segregated and are looking for a way to build them faster on more of university (east of westmount).
Can anyone confirm?
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - highlander - 02-23-2016
The first part is definitely correct, council voted for segregated lanes between Erb and Westmount. As for retrofitting segregated lanes without rebuilding the entire street, I think they were recommending staff put together a report on what this would cost, as well as what segregated lanes would cost when rebuilding other regional roads.
The webcast is worth watching for the pleasantly surprising amount of support for segregated bike lanes in general.
http://view.earthchannel.com/PlayerController.aspx?&PGD=waterlooonca&eID=294
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - nms - 02-29-2016
This is a good first step. Maybe this will be the first link in a connection between the multi-use trail along Fisher Hallman Road and the Iron Horse Trail.
RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - neonjoe - 02-29-2016
There is a connection in Kitchener, The trail system along the Henry Strum Greenway connects to the Iron Horse Trail near West ave. (Its granular and off street but there is a connection there)