UW Indigenous Residence

[ijmorlan]

I'm not really sure whether the bridge could be fixed. Certainly if it was connected to CMH and the new residence, there would be a small number of people who it is ideal for, maybe it would get some use. But I really don't see how you redirect the trail in a meaningful way to redirect most of the traffic. If there was direct access up the trail, maybe it would divert some of the pedestrians, but really the region should just fix the at grade crossing--but that would require that they be aware of the fact that the crossing is problematic.

Assuming you are talking about the Laurel Trail crossing and not Seagram Dr (I'm not very familiar with the UW campus other than taking the trail through it, but the MUT on Seagram seems like it has potential to be a useful alternative to the Laurel Trail for campus users). The trail crossing was widened quite significantly a couple of months ago, and I think has paint markings separating pedestrians and cyclists. I'll try to take a picture next time, but I haven't been through there since they were constructing it. As far as I know though, the trail crossing lights still stay red when a train is passing through which is just completely absurd.

The recent widening is a significant improvement, and does indeed include a crossride. Somehow they didn’t realize that the paths need to widen as they approach the crossing, but the crossing itself is much improved.

There should be bicycle pushbuttons well back from the intersection, or better still, make the lights green for the path except when vehicles on University trigger a green for the road (sensors at the crossing and also well back, carefully timed). This would mean that at low traffic condition everybody would always get a green (in the limiting case), and nobody would ever have to manually press a button.

It is silly that the light doesn’t go green automatically when the train goes through, but you actually can press the button and the lights for the path immediately go green, or at least that’s how it worked before the recent renovations.