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Cycling in Waterloo Region - Printable Version

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RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 11-11-2020

(11-11-2020, 03:26 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(11-11-2020, 03:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: That must have been envisioned as a major artery at some time in the long-distant past?

Yes.  As is the case for most of the overly wide roads in town.

Not necessarily.

In the 60's the prevailing belief was that any road beyond a cul-de-sac should be four lanes.  You can see this in neighbourhoods like Westheights where residential streets like Westheights Dr. were constructed at four lanes. This was never planned to be some grand artery, it's just in the 60's and 70's the belief was all roads should be 4 lanes (does that sound familiar from some beliefs today?).

Of course, some other examples like Benton and Belmont were part of grand plans that never came to fruition.  I am not certain which category Dixon fits under, but there definitely are examples of both in the city.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - taylortbb - 11-11-2020

If you haven't filled it out yet, today is the last day for the downtown cycling grid survey. https://www.engagewr.ca/downtown-cycling-grid


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - tomh009 - 11-11-2020

(11-11-2020, 03:49 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(11-11-2020, 03:26 PM)panamaniac Wrote: Yes.  As is the case for most of the overly wide roads in town.

Not necessarily.

In the 60's the prevailing belief was that any road beyond a cul-de-sac should be four lanes.  You can see this in neighbourhoods like Westheights where residential streets like Westheights Dr. were constructed at four lanes. This was never planned to be some grand artery, it's just in the 60's and 70's the belief was all roads should be 4 lanes (does that sound familiar from some beliefs today?).

Of course, some other examples like Benton and Belmont were part of grand plans that never came to fruition.  I am not certain which category Dixon fits under, but there definitely are examples of both in the city.

Arguably Westheights Dr is kind of a "local artery" as it is the primary way to access quite large swathes of SFH suburbia in Forest Heights -- including everything on Driftwood, which was built with two lanes. But, yes, I do agree it was overbuilt then, and even more so now.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - tomh009 - 11-11-2020

(11-11-2020, 03:26 PM)panamaniac Wrote:
(11-11-2020, 03:12 PM)tomh009 Wrote: That must have been envisioned as a major artery at some time in the long-distant past?

Yes.  As is the case for most of the overly wide roads in town.

Answering my own question, albeit with speculation: it looks like the intent was for an artery formed by Montgomery, Dixon and Shelley, reaching from Sheldon to Courtland, and probably planned in the late 50s. (The houses on Dixon are mostly from the 60s.) However, once the Expressway plan was formed in the early 1960s, connecting those streets no longer made sense -- or was necessary -- but Dixon had already been built by the time the Expressway construction was approved.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - KevinL - 11-11-2020

My assumption was that Dixon/Eckert/First are the connecton from King/Montgomery to Kingsway, and thus overbuilt to match. (You'll note Dixon goes down to 2 - unmarked - lanes beyond Eckert.)


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Coke6pk - 11-24-2020

OK, I am curious about the following:

Victoria St now has wide asphalt sidewalks north of the expressway out past Lackner. The other day I was travelling (in a car) s/b on Victoria St in very slow moving traffic [This is important]. The truck in front of me made a right turn into either Whale & Ale or Canadian Tire lot, and almost smacked a guy who came flying up on an ebike.

It gave me a couple questions:
1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?
2) If this is a MUT, and bikes/ebikes are allowed, who would be at fault? In crawling traffic the driver would see pedestrians walking alongside the vehicle, and would yield, but to have a fast moving vehicle pass "to the right" unexpectantly would be hard to catch. -- I know when I make a right turn, I look in my mirror (on the roadway) for cyclists, but I can't honestly say I am looking down the sidewalk for them.

Coke


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Chris - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 03:15 PM)Coke6pk Wrote: 1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?

Coke

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/driver/electric-bicycles.shtml

Where to ride an e-bike
You can ride your e-bike on most roads and highways where conventional bikes are permitted, with some exceptions.

You can't ride your e-bike:

on certain provincial controlled access highways, such as the 400 series, the Queen Elizabeth Way, the Queensway in Ottawa or the Kitchener-Waterloo Expressway
on municipal roads, including sidewalks, where bicycles are banned under municipal by-laws
on municipal roads, sidewalks, bike paths, bike trails or bike lanes where e-bikes are prohibited


I've been watching this installation go on (as most of us have) all summer and I just dreaded the amount of driveways this MUT crosses. Way too many chances for interactions with vehicular traffic for ebike, pedestrians and cyclists. So what you have seen just proves my concern is justified.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - jamincan - 11-24-2020

1) As far as I know, e-bikes are allowed where ever bikes are, unless explicitly prohibited. This excludes sidewalks, but does include MUTs, which are often disguised as sidewalks in our region.
2) Isn't the turning traffic normally at fault in any accident? Technically the cyclist has the right-of-way as the traffic that is continuing straight.

This gets at one of the things I don't like about our cycling infrastructure at all. We're designing a streetscape that is going to be more and more difficult for drivers to navigate as cycling becomes more common. It's bad enough having overtaking traffic on the right, but if drivers anticipate a cyclist might be in the bike lane and pedestrians on the sidewalk, they know where they need to look in advance of moving. With MUT/sidewalk combos, though, they not only have to pay attention to pedestrian traffic when turning, they also have to watch out for cyclists coming from up to three different directions as well as car traffic. With the mixture of bike lanes, MUT/sidewalks, separated bidirectional bike lanes on one side of the road, and configurations that switch between all of these randomly at any given intersection, the cognitive load for drivers is going to be raised, which isn't necessarily good when it comes to safety.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 03:15 PM)Coke6pk Wrote: OK, I am curious about the following:

Victoria St now has wide asphalt sidewalks north of the expressway out past Lackner.  The other day I was travelling (in a car) s/b on Victoria St in very slow moving traffic [This is important].  The truck in front of me made a right turn into either Whale & Ale or Canadian Tire lot, and almost smacked a guy who came flying up on an ebike.

It gave me a couple questions:
1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?
2) If this is a MUT, and bikes/ebikes are allowed, who would be at fault?  In crawling traffic the driver would see pedestrians walking alongside the vehicle, and would yield, but to have a fast moving vehicle pass "to the right" unexpectantly would be hard to catch.  -- I know when I make a right turn, I look in my mirror (on the roadway) for cyclists, but I can't honestly say I am looking down the sidewalk for them.

Coke

1) No ebikes aren't allowed on the sidewalk, because ebikes are bicycles and no bicycles are allowed on sidewalks.
2) This *IS* a MUT and yes, you must yield to bicycles, pedestrians, and any other trail user.

In general, you need to check the MUT and sidewalks for fast moving objects like people on bicycles just like you need to check a sidewalk for fast moving objects like runners, and in general when turning right you need to check for fast moving things (in our city notably trains).

A bit of information on design, our region fails at this, but one reason MUTs can be safer than bike lanes is they make it easier to look for bicyclists. A properly designed intersection will require you to slow and turn before crossing the MUT, so you should be at an (almost) 90 degree angle to trail traffic. This puts traffic in your field of view, or very near to it, rather than having to look behind in a mirror you as you do in a bike lane.

Of course, our traffic engineers don't really follow this best practice, and instead create gigantic permissive turn radii which encourage high speed turns while simultaneously making it harder to see cyclists, so the result is exactly what you describe.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 03:46 PM)jamincan Wrote: 1) As far as I know, e-bikes are allowed where ever bikes are, unless explicitly prohibited. This excludes sidewalks, but does include MUTs, which are often disguised as sidewalks in our region.
2) Isn't the turning traffic normally at fault in any accident? Technically the cyclist has the right-of-way as the traffic that is continuing straight.

This gets at one of the things I don't like about our cycling infrastructure at all. We're designing a streetscape that is going to be more and more difficult for drivers to navigate as cycling becomes more common. It's bad enough having overtaking traffic on the right, but if drivers anticipate a cyclist might be in the bike lane and pedestrians on the sidewalk, they know where they need to look in advance of moving. With MUT/sidewalk combos, though, they not only have to pay attention to pedestrian traffic when turning, they also have to watch out for cyclists coming from up to three different directions as well as car traffic. With the mixture of bike lanes, MUT/sidewalks, separated bidirectional bike lanes on one side of the road, and configurations that switch between all of these randomly at any given intersection, the cognitive load for drivers is going to be raised, which isn't necessarily good when it comes to safety.

For 2) turning traffic is at fault usually, but only if the traffic they hit is operating legally. So if you are making a right turn, and you hit an (adult) person cycling in a crosswalk (not a cross ride), the police often (but not always) will charge only the person cycling.

It's actually more complex than that, a simple environment encourages higher speeds, more ambiguity encourages more care. Now, I think we do a terrible job of designing this stuff, you'll rarely hear me say anything good about our regional engineers (or the manuals which they use to justify their decisions). But unfortunately, the design requirements are more subtle than just "simple is better".


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 03:26 PM)Chris Wrote:
(11-24-2020, 03:15 PM)Coke6pk Wrote: 1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?

Coke

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/driver/electric-bicycles.shtml

Where to ride an e-bike
You can ride your e-bike on most roads and highways where conventional bikes are permitted, with some exceptions.

You can't ride your e-bike:

on certain provincial controlled access highways, such as the 400 series, the Queen Elizabeth Way, the Queensway in Ottawa or the Kitchener-Waterloo Expressway
on municipal roads, including sidewalks, where bicycles are banned under municipal by-laws
on municipal roads, sidewalks, bike paths, bike trails or bike lanes where e-bikes are prohibited


I've been watching this installation go on (as most of us have) all summer and I just dreaded the amount of driveways this MUT crosses. Way too many chances for interactions with vehicular traffic for ebike, pedestrians and cyclists. So what you have seen just proves my concern is justified.

This concern was raised by ATAC as well, and at the public consultation.

Honestly, our engineers are basically just automatons. Every time this was raised they repeated the mantra "the design guide allows a MUT where the driveways are fewer than x per 100 meters". Yes, Victoria satisfies this. But the design guide does not consider, and the engineers refused to consider the nature of those driveway conflicts. They would refuse to put a MUT on a section of residential street which had a dozen driveways for single family homes that are 6 meters wide and see 2-4 cars turn per day moving at a crawling pace. Victoria has commercial driveways with massive turn radii which are 20-60 meters wide and see thousands of turns per day with turning speeds in excess of 40km/h. Yet they treat these the same. Makes me angry. They refused to even consider additional measures to make the driveway conflicts more visible to drivers (and there are many options).  Honestly...I'm glad there's something here now, but our engineers are bad at what they do.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - tomh009 - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 03:55 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(11-24-2020, 03:15 PM)Coke6pk Wrote: Victoria St now has wide asphalt sidewalks north of the expressway out past Lackner.  The other day I was travelling (in a car) s/b on Victoria St in very slow moving traffic [This is important].  The truck in front of me made a right turn into either Whale & Ale or Canadian Tire lot, and almost smacked a guy who came flying up on an ebike.

It gave me a couple questions:
1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?
2) If this is a MUT, and bikes/ebikes are allowed, who would be at fault?  In crawling traffic the driver would see pedestrians walking alongside the vehicle, and would yield, but to have a fast moving vehicle pass "to the right" unexpectantly would be hard to catch.  -- I know when I make a right turn, I look in my mirror (on the roadway) for cyclists, but I can't honestly say I am looking down the sidewalk for them.

1) No ebikes aren't allowed on the sidewalk, because ebikes are bicycles and no bicycles are allowed on sidewalks.
2) This *IS* a MUT and yes, you must yield to bicycles, pedestrians, and any other trail user.

In general, you need to check the MUT and sidewalks for fast moving objects like people on bicycles just like you need to check a sidewalk for fast moving objects like runners, and in general when turning right you need to check for fast moving things (in our city notably trains).

Highlighting that phrase from Coke's post ... one frustration I have on our trails/MUTs that many of the "e-bikes" that fly past are not actually e-bikes (which need to have functional pedals) but e-scooters. And that's completely apart from our local MUT design issues.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 05:04 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(11-24-2020, 03:55 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: 1) No ebikes aren't allowed on the sidewalk, because ebikes are bicycles and no bicycles are allowed on sidewalks.
2) This *IS* a MUT and yes, you must yield to bicycles, pedestrians, and any other trail user.

In general, you need to check the MUT and sidewalks for fast moving objects like people on bicycles just like you need to check a sidewalk for fast moving objects like runners, and in general when turning right you need to check for fast moving things (in our city notably trains).

Highlighting that phrase from Coke's post ... one frustration I have on our trails/MUTs that many of the "e-bikes" that fly past are not actually e-bikes (which need to have functional pedals) but e-scooters. And that's completely apart from our local MUT design issues.

Yes, leaving aside local infra, e-scooters are an interesting issue...

I know a lot of people love to hate them (including my parents) they call them DUI scooters or some nonsense. But the fact is they provide meaningful mobility for a lot of people in our community. People who lose their license (and it is hard to do) clearly should not be driving, but still deserve the same mobility as everyone else. Our transit system is not great for all people, and not everyone wants to cycle, I have no problem with people using them as a mobility device. But because of the people who usually ride them, there is a lot of prejudice.

Which brings me to regulations.  The regulations around ebikes are being changed and likely most escooters will no longer be classified as ebikes (and thus will require an M-L license). This I think is absurd, and will do nothing but give police an excuse to target the type of people who ride these scooters. The only reason it is being considered is because of the group of people who are targeted. Can you imagine the letters to the editor, the screaming, the tantrums that would ensue if for example, Ontario started requiring you to have a D license to operate a 2-ton pickup. I don't think it's unreasonable, it's a huge vehicle that causes a huge amount of harm on our road, it should be licensed more strongly (G licenses are from a vending machine really). But if that change happened, there would be hell to pay, because the people who drive 2-ton pickups---leaving aside their personality---have wealth and power. People who ride escooters largely do not.

So, it suffices to say I am disappointed, I do think they could do to be regulated differently, while I don't mind them in bike lanes, I don't really like them on the trails or in parks, but I also understand on a road like Victoria, it would be extremely dangerous not to be on the trail. It's just one more way in which our transportation system fails groups of people who are easy to ignore.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - ijmorlan - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 04:10 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Honestly, our engineers are basically just automatons. Every time this was raised they repeated the mantra "the design guide allows a MUT where the driveways are fewer than x per 100 meters". Yes, Victoria satisfies this. But the design guide does not consider, and the engineers refused to consider the nature of those driveway conflicts. They would refuse to put a MUT on a section of residential street which had a dozen driveways for single family homes that are 6 meters wide and see 2-4 cars turn per day moving at a crawling pace. Victoria has commercial driveways with massive turn radii which are 20-60 meters wide and see thousands of turns per day with turning speeds in excess of 40km/h. Yet they treat these the same. Makes me angry. They refused to even consider additional measures to make the driveway conflicts more visible to drivers (and there are many options).  Honestly...I'm glad there's something here now, but our engineers are bad at what they do.

Anybody who would write or quote favourably from a design guide that says that is a bad and incompetent engineer.

Obviously, it should relate to the total amount and nature of traffic crossing the MUT, with considerable leeway to take into account local conditions. Also it is inappropriate to use what is written in a design guide as a way of silencing citizen input.

How do our bridges stay up? They must be designed by a different and higher quality of engineer. Or maybe it turns out that physics is easier than the complicated combination of psychology, economics, game theory, and other disciplines involved in designing good complete streets infrastructure.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - tomh009 - 11-24-2020

(11-24-2020, 05:32 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(11-24-2020, 05:04 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Highlighting that phrase from Coke's post ... one frustration I have on our trails/MUTs that many of the "e-bikes" that fly past are not actually e-bikes (which need to have functional pedals) but e-scooters. And that's completely apart from our local MUT design issues.

Yes, leaving aside local infra, e-scooters are an interesting issue...

I know a lot of people love to hate them (including my parents) they call them DUI scooters or some nonsense. But the fact is they provide meaningful mobility for a lot of people in our community. People who lose their license (and it is hard to do) clearly should not be driving, but still deserve the same mobility as everyone else. Our transit system is not great for all people, and not everyone wants to cycle, I have no problem with people using them as a mobility device. But because of the people who usually ride them, there is a lot of prejudice.

I don't care who's using them (and I am specifically referring to the electric motorcycle or Vespa-style scooters and not to the sit-down mobility scooters) -- I simply think they are too fast for MUTs and sidewalks. The mobility scooters, on the other hand, tend to have far more modest speeds.

An M licence is probably not the answer. But maybe a written test combined with vehicle licensing would be good.