02-20-2017, 08:38 AM
(02-19-2017, 12:43 PM)Markster Wrote:(02-19-2017, 08:41 AM)Canard Wrote: Heading Westbound, after coming down Conestogo (to try and avoid King/Northfield), I turned left onto Northfield and merged in to the bike lanes that start there. Pretty scary and narrow with cars coming by on both sides there (it cuts across the ramps). Here's a video I made heading the other way:
I kept thinking the "Bike Lane" signs were pointing at the sidewalk, treating it as a "Shared Pathway" - when really they're pointing at the road... but the signs have to be off to the side, since there's no little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road.
I feel like I need to say it, that I never, ever ride on the sidewalk - but I didn't think it was safe once I got partway across the bridge to stop and schlep my bike over the snow and ice onto the narrow, partially covered bike lane to get back in it, once I realized where it was.
The Northfield bridge really should have made the sidewalks wider, and declared them as MUTs. I saw that part of the confusion you had was that the bike lane was half full of snow. If they gave even half the width of that bike lane to a widened sidewalk, it could work.
On a long bridge it’s nutty to prefer bicycle lanes over a portion of the sidewalk. Bicycles and pedestrians next to each other is way safer than bicycles and motor traffic when there are no driveways and the motor traffic is travelling faster. The only reason to prefer bicycle lanes is if there are lots of interruptions to the straight flow of the traffic.
On this particular bridge they really should have seriously considered a path down the centre, separated from the motor vehicle lanes by the LRT tracks. Oh well.