Cycling in Waterloo Region

[welltoldtales]

It also gives the impression that they don't consider all our roads to be a network - the region has theirs and the cities have their own and they shouldn't consider the big picture. Very frustrating.

My point for Guelph Street is that there was plenty of room to build a dedicated bike lane. Why not take that option as opposed to a 'share the road' approach where room permits. It's safer and provides a more comfortable ride. 

Having spent a great deal of time in the Netherlands for work (primarily Amsterdam and Oosterhout), a majority of the cycling infrastructure is dedicated and separated bike lanes. Shared spaces are primarily in the core areas.

Bike infrastructure on main roads is dedicated.

But the majority of roads are small residential streets, the same is true here, which are usually shared, again also true here, with good design, definitely not true here.

But it isn't a "bike infra road" thing, it's just a "this is how we build safe roads" thing...every road is built this way.

And frankly, it's stupid that we don't, the way we build roads is less safe, and MORE expensive.

It might be the case that the extra cost to widen Guelph St. would be a waste because of traffic levels, and it would be better use of money to narrow it and share it, but I don't know because I'm neither a traffic engineer, nor privy to the traffic data.

But because we cannot build safe roads, then that isn't a real option.

Guelph could not have added bike lanes with the widths, and if they did they wouldn't be separated and painted instead which would probably increase speed on Guelph Street. What the city did was "pinch" the intersections to make it look tighter. My understanding is that they started focusing on reducing speeds and then ended up working a lot more on low-impact paving/parking (you'll notice that some of the parking spaces paving looks different, it is more porous). I actually haven't had too many issues on Guelph but there is definitely a "breaking in" period that is necessary. Many drivers still believe that Guelph is some sort of bypass to King.