General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours

[plam]

At two lanes each, there would be enough space for separated bike lanes. That would encourage cycling, tie in nicely with the Bridgeport/Albert/Erb improvement and increase separation between cars and pedestrians.

3 lanes would be strange, but would allow 2-way flow on each street without losing any lanes, while also not requiring any expansion.

I can't imagine businesses would be happy losing 50% of the lanes coming from the highway, and I'm not sure 3 lanes would be worth the trouble and 4 would hurt walkability. How would you see a 2-way conversion?

I've biked many times a week in the late evening on Erb and Bridgeport (although not this year). Of course, as we all know, they are also a major way for cars to get to the expressway.

These streets aren't super friendly for biking but the worst part is around the expressway. Continuing on Erb when cars are merging onto the expressway is probably the trickiest part of that bike ride. (Because I come back late enough, cars coming from the expressway aren't as much of an issue for me, but of course there's the thing where you've been driving at, say, 90 and now are supposed to drive at 50. Being two-way would help there.)

I'm always in favour of separated bike lanes but I'm not sure what they would do in this particular case. If you had asked me to prioritize, I would've preferred such lanes on Weber. Spur Line changes that calculation a bit now, although I'm not sure whether it is too much of a detour. Weber is faster, of course. And separated bike lanes are tricky in the vicinity of the expressway.

So, how many lanes should there be? Well, I guess that depends on the character of the traffic. I think most of it should be through traffic. In that case I'm not sure a left turn lane would be that helpful: not so many cars are turning left. Me, I'd be fine with two lanes + separated bike lanes. I suppose you wouldn't need bike lanes on both of these streets. I would love to see facts about traffic though.