06-28-2026, 01:03 PM
(06-28-2026, 10:40 AM)tomh009 Wrote:(06-27-2026, 01:35 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I was speaking more of the design or designation of active transportation "routes".
Like they're calling things a "route" which has gaps in it. A P.Eng. wouldn't sign off on a road that had a hole in it, so why do they sign off on a bike route that has a hole in it.
I don't think the "cycling route" name or concept is decided by engineers ...
Do transportation planners not hold an engineering degree? Maybe they don't.
In some ways that makes it harder to take a stand, in other ways easier.
I wish someone would take a stand, and honestly that stand is most easily taken by the professional bureaucrats rather than the politicians. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's literally one of the purposes of having bureaucrats.
I really do think building inadequate bike infra (and I include "designating routes" in "building" here) is self defeating at least in most of the country. Oh The Urbanity put out a video just recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIPiODsF0v0 and they discuss a lot of what they expect in Montreal from the new vaguely anti-bike gov. It reinforces my opinion that Montreal is unlike any other North American city and is actually a lot like a European city, but in any case, my take from this is that bad cycling infra is actually not going to be self-defeating in Montreal. Cycling is so popular that people who use the infra are still going to end up seduced by the "magic, you can have everything and it's totally fair when we allocate all the road space to cars" party. But because their voters are actually using this infra, they're going to get angry when the stuff they build is shit. On the contrary in KW cycling is so niche that politicians can build shit and then when activists complain everyone just goes "well we built it, these people are never satisfied".
So yeah, I wish people would take a stand on this.