Avalon Place Highway 7/8 Multi-Use Trail Crossing

[ZEBuilder]

You're right, I wasn't counting the Alpine & 7/8 roundabout which I find to be, while still ridiculously overbuilt, much MUCH more accessible to pedestrians.

I think if you're willing to cross the Alpine roundabout then there is no difference between the Avalon Pl. bridge and the Homer Watson crossing, would you agree?

As for the political feasibility...I don't actually agree, our councils are weak and they absolutely prioritize cars over cycling, but they do seem to care about peds and cycling, and especially pedestrians. I do think council would support fixing these things and improving Homer Watson north...I think for things like that, the real obstacle is our engineering departments incompetence and car blindness.

I have never used the Northwest crossing of that second roundabout, but it does look more reasonable on Google Maps at least. The other crossings of that roundabout I have used and would not like to use again... So yes, the options would be roughly equal in that case (avoiding driveways into the plaza would be a bonus of the bridge, but that's a universal cycling experience we have to deal with regardless).

Politically, I'm think more about the constituents. I think even supportive counselors would have to weigh the re-election risk that options like raised crossings would introduce. I know many people who live in that area of Kitchener as I grew up there, and I don't get the vibe that they would take kindly to what we would consider an acceptable roundabout.

Those roundabouts regardless of what direction you're coming from as a pedestrian/cyclist are absolutely brutal, the Alpine/Ottawa one sucks because everyone is either coming or going to the highway so pedestrians/cyclists are the last things on their minds, then the Homer Watson/Ottawa one is horrible, my commute results in me passing through them regularly and it's really quite amazing that there hasn't been more accidents involving pedestrians/cyclists, going through them during the day is bad enough, at night those are an entirely different beast because of how poorly lit they are.

The way the existing system is designed anyone in Alpine/Country Hills/McLennan Park area who wants to cycle/walk towards the downtown core has to go through at least a portion of those two roundabouts, the only other option is to go through the Block Line/Homer Watson intersection and then down Courtland or all the way to Westmount and cut back along Queen or Greenbrook both of which are horrible routes to do. Sure the bridge is costing an extensive amount of money but the reality of the current system is you either risk getting hit going through those two roundabouts or go miles out of ones way to avoid it, the bridge will solve that problem.

Certainly we could redesign those roundabouts but politically it would be a catastrophe, just think of what would happen if we decided to narrow the approaches to reduce speeds or we made raised crossings forcing drivers to slow down, now it takes an extra 2 minutes in a drivers commute, as simple as those solutions may be they are not politically feasible. The backlash would be massive. If we were to do anything to this roundabout we might as well do it to the many other horrible roundabouts as well, Bleams and Fischer Hallman comes to mind so does Erb and Ira Needles.