05-06-2020, 05:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-06-2020, 10:08 PM by danbrotherston.)
In other news, the region continues to generally prioritize cars. Four projects are going to council for approvals of bids this month (i.e., it's way too late to try and fix anything), from worst to best, because I'm trying to be positive:
1. Arthur St. and Sawmill reconstruction. Despite a major cycle route directly crossing this project, and a difficult/scary intersection for cyclists being reconstructed, there is exactly zero consideration given to cycling in this project. It wasn't even a consideration.
2. Dundas St. is being reconstructed with on street bike lanes. I used to call this a win, but on such a major street, I don't feel this is actually much value in this anymore. Further, despite me raising this issue with the project staff, they have failed to tighten up most of the turn radii with residential streets. And I don't mean the usual, 20-30 meter radii that regional engineers insist on, I'm talking the 200-500 meter radii that are as a result of oblique street angles, leading to 20-30 meter crossings of 70 km/h traffic of 2 lane residential streets.
3. Erb St. is being reconstructed, in this case the region is building some protected lanes which is great, or at least some great. But the turning radii are still gigantic leading to huge crossing distances with residential streets.
4. The region will be constructing a MUT along Ottawa St. to connect the IHT with the planned bike lanes on Ottawa to the east. This is great news, but it is that rare kind of thing where they are correcting bad decisions made very recently. This project is part of the Weber St. reconstruction, and also includes protected cycle lanes along Ottawa. And they even managed to at least compute the correct turning radiis. They're still using the regions unnecessarily giant turn radii but the engineers computed the effect turn radii from outside the bike lane, instead of simply the curb radius which ignores the fact that cars are turning from 2 meters away. Honestly, this is simple stuff, but I don't believe they got it right on Dundas OR on Erb.
1. Arthur St. and Sawmill reconstruction. Despite a major cycle route directly crossing this project, and a difficult/scary intersection for cyclists being reconstructed, there is exactly zero consideration given to cycling in this project. It wasn't even a consideration.
2. Dundas St. is being reconstructed with on street bike lanes. I used to call this a win, but on such a major street, I don't feel this is actually much value in this anymore. Further, despite me raising this issue with the project staff, they have failed to tighten up most of the turn radii with residential streets. And I don't mean the usual, 20-30 meter radii that regional engineers insist on, I'm talking the 200-500 meter radii that are as a result of oblique street angles, leading to 20-30 meter crossings of 70 km/h traffic of 2 lane residential streets.
3. Erb St. is being reconstructed, in this case the region is building some protected lanes which is great, or at least some great. But the turning radii are still gigantic leading to huge crossing distances with residential streets.
4. The region will be constructing a MUT along Ottawa St. to connect the IHT with the planned bike lanes on Ottawa to the east. This is great news, but it is that rare kind of thing where they are correcting bad decisions made very recently. This project is part of the Weber St. reconstruction, and also includes protected cycle lanes along Ottawa. And they even managed to at least compute the correct turning radiis. They're still using the regions unnecessarily giant turn radii but the engineers computed the effect turn radii from outside the bike lane, instead of simply the curb radius which ignores the fact that cars are turning from 2 meters away. Honestly, this is simple stuff, but I don't believe they got it right on Dundas OR on Erb.