08-18-2020, 04:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-18-2020, 04:02 PM by danbrotherston.)
(08-18-2020, 03:38 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(08-18-2020, 02:59 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: The realization that I am coming too is that the most important thing--maybe the only important thing when selecting which cycling projects to push is how big an impact they will have on cycling. If you create new supporters, the project will be successful. Creating useless lanes, disconnected lanes, or lanes that might be useful only in the future will only serve to provide arguments against building more infrastructure, and provide no supporters to argue the other side...but building impactful infrastructure--even if doing so upsets more people--is by far the better value both politically and for society.
And this is why I questioned the value of putting lanes on Benton here a few years back: not because the space is needed for cars (it's not) but because it's just three or four blocks, and does not connect to anything.
Now, if Frederick gets bike lanes, we may be onto something, as the (Kitchener) south end of Benton connects to Mike Wagner Green and the IHT through a quiet residential street, and the Benton street diet could create a connection instead of an isolated three-block stretch of lanes that few people will use.
If you mean Benton between Charles and Courtland, this actually does make some connections...the IHT is accessible from the west end of Benton, and bringing it two blocks closer to Downtown, with near connections to a transit station, (and the former Charles Term) is meaningful...even though it's not a long route...not every part of the network need be built with segregated infrastructure...although for it to be a real connection there would need to be wayfinding and prioritization changes made elsewhere in the network...without those changes...it would be isolated.
The reasons for changes to Benton are larger however, whether or not it got bike lanes, the road is criminally wide and suburban for a downtown street, it dates to the 60s and now defunct long term plans of cutting through the city...but those plans have been dead for decades, it should have been redesigned, instead we continue to waste money paving a wide street. Now we've rebuilt a section with the LRT which will make retrofitting it to something better much more difficult.
It's just another demonstration of how our engineer favour the car centric status quo above everything including reason.