Northfield / 85 Exchange upgrades?

[ijmorlan]

Which is why they should have seriously considered my idea to put the pedestrian/bike path down the middle between the transit lanes (and shift those lanes and the general traffic lanes towards the outside of the bridge in order to create the space to do so). This would allow pedestrians and bicycles to travel from the tracks to Colby/Conestogo without interacting with any motor vehicle traffic whatsoever.

I agree with you here, it's a very clever way of eliminating many crossings, especially dangerous ramp crossing.  Sadly I also agree with Canard here, it was never going to happen.  It's simply to...unusual, untested for it to be risked.  The traffic engineers already know how risky sidewalks and bike lanes across freeway ramps are, and known risk is apparently good.

It was a nice dream.

Unfortunately, it seems planners are not paid to be creative. In fact, they seem to have mental defense techniques against any creative suggestion.

For example, at the spur line consultations, I suggested pedestrian refuges, in particular on Union and Allen, but potentially at other locations. They started on about “level 2 pedestrian crossovers” as if they were some great new thing, and didn’t seem to even understand why I was suggesting refuges — they’re better than crossovers because they allow pedestrians to deal with one direction at a time, which on a street like Allen or even Union is quite sufficient to take a dicy crossing and turn it into a comfortable one. Later I investigated what the crossovers were about and sure enough this new “level 1” and “level 2” stuff is just codifying relatively minor variations in signage for a concept that has existed for several decades — neither is anything really new, just two new slightly different standards for signage. What would have been so threatening to them about actually thinking about refuges? I just don’t understand it.

Then, closer to the Northfield bridge, I also wanted them to put a platform for the tourist train between the freight track and the LRT tracks. “No space”. But wait, the entire area is surrounded by grass. So, expropriating a 4m swath of the adjacent property would be no problem. Now, maybe it’s not worth it — maybe the Region would feel the tourist train should pay, and maybe they couldn’t afford it — but the idea that there is no space, full stop, is absurd.