Cycling in Waterloo Region

[jamincan]

I'm not sure what your goals are, but the best riding footage these days seems to come from chest-mounted cameras. Unfortunately, it's not terribly discreet, but I'm sure you could disguise it to a certain extent by wearing a jacket over the harness or something.

[dtkvictim]

I use a program for indoor training called fulgaz, they only take footage from gopro cameras and it looks fantastic. The videos get edited so they must do some kind of post-production but you might glean something filming guide about what settings to use and all that. I was thinking of renting a gopro to try out filming a ride, there's a listing on pinkbike for gopro rentals that include a k-edge out-in-front mount but they're in Toronto and I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Fulgaz has a facebook group that's public and you could likely find plenty of sample footage there, or on their preview page though they've been edited to some extend. If you have a facebook login I imagine you could search that group and find all kinds of stuff about people's setups.

Thanks, this is really helpful. That guide looks very thorough, and the sample footage looks promising despite being low resolution samples.

I'm not sure what your goals are, but the best riding footage these days seems to come from chest-mounted cameras. Unfortunately, it's not terribly discreet, but I'm sure you could disguise it to a certain extent by wearing a jacket over the harness or something.

I'm not entirely sure TBH, maybe just to show some possible safe cycling routes through the city. Most people I know are suburbanites who have no perspective of what the city looks and what routes exist on a bike. A few people I've taken on rides were surprised and enjoyed it, and looked into whether they could buy a bike and cycle anywhere safely from their homes, so I think it's worth sharing.

I know a lot of people suggest chest mounted cameras, but 1) I don't want the perspective to include arms, though that might be avoidable, 2) I would personally feel awkward, and 3) I don't want something that might cause a question on pathways, interrupting the ride.

[bravado]

Sometimes I don't think that cyclists and their paths get the same priority and care in design as other 4-wheeled vehicle routes...

[dtkvictim]

Sometimes I don't think that cyclists and their paths get the same priority and care in design as other 4-wheeled vehicle routes...

At least there's room at go around? Plenty of sidewalks with light/hydro poles that you can hardly walk around, let alone pass with a stroller or wheelchair. Trying too look on the bright side here...

Where is this?

[dtkvictim]

Here is a photo of the transition of the Water St bike lanes to the Weber St MUT, since it was being discussed earlier. The painted yellow line on the MUT only continues for a couple meters out of frame, across the plaza driveway, and disappears after that.

[bravado]

Sometimes I don't think that cyclists and their paths get the same priority and care in design as other 4-wheeled vehicle routes...

At least there's room at go around? Plenty of sidewalks with light/hydro poles that you can hardly walk around, let alone pass with a stroller or wheelchair. Trying too look on the bright side here...

Where is this?

Fountain Street in Preston. There are a bunch of interesting light poles that also kinda creep into the bike lane. It's tolerable, but annoying the things you have to tolerate that others don't.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3983691,-80.370207,18z

[robd]

At least there's room at go around? Plenty of sidewalks with light/hydro poles that you can hardly walk around, let alone pass with a stroller or wheelchair. Trying too look on the bright side here...

Where is this?

Fountain Street in Preston. There are a bunch of interesting light poles that also kinda creep into the bike lane. It's tolerable, but annoying the things you have to tolerate that others don't.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3983691,-80.370207,18z

This isn't even the worst part of the infrastructure. total length is 850m, for some reason it crosses from one side of the road to the other where you would legally have to walk your bike, no signage of the end of the infrastructure and painted arrows that don't hint at the switch in sides so you end up riding on a sidewalk. The refusal to appropriate minimum amount of land along fountain to connect it with the MUP or send it up Shantz Hill makes it infrastructure to nowhere.

It is better than nothing but I regularly have to break the law just to be keep my kid safe. This is also a surprisingly busy area for active transportation.

[bravado]

Fountain Street in Preston. There are a bunch of interesting light poles that also kinda creep into the bike lane. It's tolerable, but annoying the things you have to tolerate that others don't.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.3983691,-80.370207,18z

This isn't even the worst part of the infrastructure. total length is 850m, for some reason it crosses from one side of the road to the other where you would legally have to walk your bike, no signage of the end of the infrastructure and painted arrows that don't hint at the switch in sides so you end up riding on a sidewalk. The refusal to appropriate minimum amount of land along fountain to connect it with the MUP or send it up Shantz Hill makes it infrastructure to nowhere.

It is better than nothing but I regularly have to break the law just to be keep my kid safe. This is also a surprisingly busy area for active transportation.

Ha yeah, it has a MUT starting at the Blair roundabout, then it goes away once the houses start, then it re-appears at Canadian Tire, then switches sides of the road at Riverside Park, and then disappears for 1 block... and then the on-street bike lane appears on the other side of the street in Preston! Perfect infrastructure!

[danbrotherston]

This isn't even the worst part of the infrastructure. total length is 850m, for some reason it crosses from one side of the road to the other where you would legally have to walk your bike, no signage of the end of the infrastructure and painted arrows that don't hint at the switch in sides so you end up riding on a sidewalk. The refusal to appropriate minimum amount of land along fountain to connect it with the MUP or send it up Shantz Hill makes it infrastructure to nowhere.

It is better than nothing but I regularly have to break the law just to be keep my kid safe. This is also a surprisingly busy area for active transportation.

Ha yeah, it has a MUT starting at the Blair roundabout, then it goes away once the houses start, then it re-appears at Canadian Tire, then switches sides of the road at Riverside Park, and then disappears for 1 block... and then the on-street bike lane appears on the other side of the street in Preston! Perfect infrastructure!

Funding is certainly an obstacle to cycling infrastructure.

But it's becoming increasingly clear that securing funding is not SUFFICIENT for cycling infra.

We need political will and engineering competence.

We also need to stop putting up with mediocrity.

I really really hope folks, community and on council refuse to accept the region's mediocre "solution" to their unwillingness to dedicate space to cyclists for the downtown grid...

The downtown grid is the rarest of birds...an opportunity with funding, political will, and talent. I hope it is not compromised by the incompetence and apathy at the regional level, and tolerance of mediocrity and frankly exhaustion from everyone else.

[Coke6pk]

Sometimes I don't think that cyclists and their paths get the same priority and care in design as other 4-wheeled vehicle routes...

At least there's room at go around? Plenty of sidewalks with light/hydro poles that you can hardly walk around, let alone pass with a stroller or wheelchair. Trying too look on the bright side here...

Where is this?

They could move the box out onto Fountain St.  There would still be room for cars to drive around it.....

Coke

[robd]

At least there's room at go around? Plenty of sidewalks with light/hydro poles that you can hardly walk around, let alone pass with a stroller or wheelchair. Trying too look on the bright side here...

Where is this?

They could move the box out onto Fountain St.  There would still be room for cars to drive around it.....

Coke

This was a defineate political will issue. Hopefully the bridge the fountain MUP across the river goes ahead soon, it will help many avoid the awful mess above.

[dtkmelissa]

I'm getting more and more frustrated with media reports on the deaths of vulnerable road users. Earlier this month, the Record stated "the driver simply was not paying full attention" when they hit and killed someone riding their bike. I wrote a bit about this frustrating and dangerous language in reporting, here. https://citified.substack.com/p/words-matter?s=w

[plam]

I'm getting more and more frustrated with media reports on the deaths of vulnerable road users. Earlier this month, the Record stated "the driver simply was not paying full attention" when they hit and killed someone riding their bike. I wrote a bit about this frustrating and dangerous language in reporting, here. https://citified.substack.com/p/words-matter?s=w

Yes, thanks for the post, totally agree.

[KevinT]

Looking for some advice.

Does anyone here have experience recording bike rides for cinematic purposes (rather than safety/legal reasons)? Think a cross of Youtube channels like Bicycle Dutch, Johnny Strides, Rambalac. I'm looking for something that is well stabilized, handlebar mounted (or discreet), and can record for ~60 minutes at a time.

GoPros seem like the default choice, but footage I've seen never seems impressive. The Hero 10 seems to have heat issues and often shuts down. The Insta360 GO 2 is almost exactly what I want (great footage, great discreet mounting system) but has a very short record time.

What cameras and mounting systems have you guys tried? Any sample footage you've taken?

Thanks.

I use a GoPro Max 360 and signed up for their cloud service. The camera splits recordings into 4GB files on the SD card, but once those files are on their cloud via the camera's wifi sync then you have the option to download each recording as a single massive file. It's a shame they don't offer standalone file merging software, as clearly they know how to do it.

Edit to add: I never used the helmet mount that the camera came with on my snowboard helmet (I prefer the invisible selfie stick perspective for snowboarding) so I put it on my bike helmet. The perspective is weird for MTB ride videos, but probably perfect for what you're after. I should reframe and upload the full one-hour recording of my neighbourhood loop that I took last year so you can see what's possible.

[dtkvictim]

Photo from Joseph & Gaukel.

The temporary cones have been replaced with more permanent flexible posts. A reasonable place to end up I guess, even if they are further sign pollution (it really is amazing how many signs we can put up in this city, says a lot about our street design).

The crossing was recently resurfaced for some reason, and lane markings have now been added through the crossing. It appears that shark teeth will be painted soon for both the bike and car lanes (does anyone know why markings all seem to be done on separate days, sometimes weeks apart? It's like the city has workers driving around, but each crew is only trained in a single colour of paint).

Both of the flag crossings have been reapplied. They were actually painted on before winter, but had completely come off by the end of winter. Hopefully they didn't cost $10k a piece that time, and won't continue to come off each winter.

Ultimately I think this crossing is a bit of a mess. I'll take a photo once the shark teeth are on, but for both bikes and cars there are separate shark teeth for each of the two crossings. In my opinion, there is no reason for this entire intersection to not just be one giant crossing. It should have been a (brick) raised crossing, level with the Victoria Park entrance and Gaukel. It's turning out to be a visual overload with all the signage, paint, and two distinct crossings.