Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I suspect so, but it is a considerably higher span, and would require considerable engineering work to integrate the embankments.  I'm quite certain the cost will be in the millions.

And then near the bridge there may be some conflicts with the plaza parking.

My preferred option would be to right-size the road to three lanes, and to use the space we have at vastly lower cost.  But historically, this is a hard sell...15 minutes of minor congestion is a hard pill to swallow for folks who have their food chewed for them, and yet somehow control the government.

How wide are the lanes? Could we reduce each lane by 20-30cm in order to turn the sidewalk into a MUT?

I mean, maybe...if you squeezed everything, and I mean everything, you could do a 3 meter MUT (which is undersized, because as the RoW transportation commissioner DIDN'T know, for cycling infra next to a vertical obstruction, you need to add 0.5 meters as you do for a roadway, so really 2.5 meters which is undersized but still meets the minimum), the lanes look to be about 3.5 meters wide, with a very cramped 1.5 meter sidewalk, you could probably get to the required 3 meter MUT by going to the MTO's minimum standard lane width of 3.15 (which, by the way, the region refuses to actually use as a minimum).

So yes, you could possibly squeeze everything in, in a very uncomfortable situation (provided they are also able to increase the height of the bridge guard rails without using any space, because they are too short to be allowed to be used on a MUT).

But even if you managed to achieve that, you'd still be screwed on the bridge approaches, because there is no sidewalk outside of the bridge...or rather, the sidewalk is only on one side except for on the bridge itself. So on the approaches, you'd be 1.5 meters short, you'd still have to rebuild the embankment.

As far as I can tell, a road right sizing is the only way to do this for a reasonable cost.  Given they have started with MUTs though, I'm thinking the city has already refused such a common sense option and will instead opt for trying to find the money one way to complete this critical link in a wasteful but less contentious way.

Or to put it another very blunt way...there are no fiscal conservatives when it comes to transportation. There are only the foolish, and the wasteful.

Edit: Well, I stand corrected, apparently taking a curb lane---at least for the bridge section---is in the cards. That's great news!