General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Not sure if this has been previously posted or not, but it looks like union from king to Moore is being torn up next year

https://www.engagewr.ca/union-reconstruction

While I personally don't mind MUTs, especially the way they are twinned here (one on each side of the road) I don't like the cycling infra changing every few blocks as it is bound to cause confusion.

Is there really no room on the road to continue the on-road bike lanes? What is the current road width?

First, we’ll look at the King St. end of the block. I measured the curb-to-curb distance at the left-turn-lane stop line and got 15.4m.

I measured the straight through and left-turn lanes (west/southbound) as 3.3m and 3.2m respectively, so let’s average this out and say that assuming the existing infrastructure is acceptable (which it clearly was just a few years ago when it was created), 3.25m is sufficient width for a traffic lane at this location.

So the four total lanes (right turn, straight, left turn, other direction straight) need take a total of 3.25m * 4 = 13m. This leaves 2.4m to re-purpose as bicycle lanes without moving the curbs even 1cm.

Now, consider the Mary St. end. The curb-to-curb distance is 11.1m, and there are 3 lanes: straight, left turn, straight; as before assume 3.25m is enough and get 9.8m required, leaving 1.3m without moving the curbs. This is not enough and there is a challenge because the house at the corner of Mary and Union is inconveniently far forward on its lot. But there is space on the other side of the road, and the proposal already contemplates eliminating various left turn lanes off of Union, so it should be possible to fit the bike lanes in.

So right at King there is definitely room for the bike lanes. There is a bit more of a challenge closer to Mary St., but it should still be doable, although slightly more property taking and/or compromise on traffic lanes (specifically, turn lanes) will be needed. For that matter, while I’m not really a fan of knocking down houses for road space, we wouldn’t let one house get in the way of an actual road widening; why should it be different for bike lanes? So overall, I conclude that there should be bike lanes the whole way, even if a bit more creativity is needed in the last block at King St.

Also, I reject the excuse that there is a lack of connectivity. Basically they are using the massive screw-up in leaving out cycling infrastructure from King St. to excuse the smaller but still quite significant screw-up in leaving out cycling infrastructure from at least one block of Union St.

Finally, did anybody else notice how they are playing off pedestrians against cyclists? I’m not going to accuse anyone of malice, but I hardly think that coming up with a pedestrian focussed alternative that completely omits bicycles and a bike lanes version that doesn’t do anything for pedestrians and making us choose between those alternatives is a good way of promoting active transportation in general.

BTW, for reference, the width of a wide but still standard semitrailer is 8½ feet, or 2.6m, so 3.25m should be enough — that leaves over 30cm on each side for maneuvering. This is not enough on a road whose main purpose is moving trucks and other motor traffic, but it’s clearly fine on a neighbourhood road where speeds and truck traffic volume should be limited.