Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Going NE (Kitchener north) from the IHT, toward Charles, will have a 500m hole? I thought that's where the MUT is going in. What am I missing?

No, going west (southwest, by the compass) there will be a 500 meter hole, between the IHT and the protected bike lanes on Ottawa west of Mill Station.

[tomh009]

Thanks. You said "east" so I got confused ...

[danbrotherston]

Thanks. You said "east" so I got confused ...

Sorry my bad, I've edited, I shouldn't be using compass directions in KW anyway .

[tomh009]

Yeah, that's why I use "Kitchener south" etc as they are unambiguous.

[danbrotherston]

Well, it's comforting to see that in our society despite all the upheavel, some things never change. The region continues to propose bad cycle infra:

https://calendar.regionofwaterloo.ca/Cou...bc00af6c07

Looks like a Fairway Rd. project was proposed, that includes the usual problems, on road cycle lanes on a busy 4 lane arterial, MUTs with no consideration for crossing, high speed, traffic focused roundabouts.

[clasher]

Well, it's comforting to see that in our society despite all the upheavel, some things never change. The region continues to propose bad cycle infra:

https://calendar.regionofwaterloo.ca/Cou...bc00af6c07

Looks like a Fairway Rd. project was proposed, that includes the usual problems, on road cycle lanes on a busy 4 lane arterial, MUTs with no consideration for crossing, high speed, traffic focused roundabouts.

Gotta have an overbuilt fairway connect to an overbuilt river road too... what a waste of money, that stretch of fairway has few intersections and turn lanes can handle all the traffic, there aren't many (if any) driveways, it's the perfect spot to build off-road cycle tracks and sidewalks, there's enough room to build a highway so that's all they wanna do. effing dumb.

Also down that way, they could sign another cycling route that goes down Idlecreek and Daimler for people that don't want to climb the big hill on Fairway. Following all the little creeks usually makes for less hills.

[jamincan]

Fairway from River to King is another road that would work far better as two-lanes plus a turning lane. River is also massively overbuilt at four lanes. We need to fight road-obesity!

[danbrotherston]

Fairway from River to King is another road that would work far better as two-lanes plus a turning lane. River is also massively overbuilt at four lanes. We need to fight road-obesity!

River absolutely should be rebuilt as a narrower road. But I think the city is on board with that.

Fairway would be a far bigger fight. The worst part is we would be fighting the sunk costs fallacy--they already spent huge sums of money building a 4 lane bridge over the Grand River. Not exactly to nowhere, but way way over capacity. So because they've made these huge investments, and their traffic models show if they keep building sprawling suburbs with no other choice but to drive, that in 30 years, they'll need four lanes (never mind climate change will be a complete failure in that universe) therefore, they have to widen it all to four lanes.

Honestly, I don't know what to do about the region. Few councillors have shown any interest in changing, and staff are FIRMLY in the "do the same as we've always done, NEVER change" camp.

[ijmorlan]

Honestly, I don't know what to do about the region. Few councillors have shown any interest in changing, and staff are FIRMLY in the "do the same as we've always done, NEVER change" camp.

The more I see how roads continue to be overbuilt and poorly designed, the more amazed I become that our LRT is a reality. It’s like the Regional government has a split personality.

[danbrotherston]

Honestly, I don't know what to do about the region. Few councillors have shown any interest in changing, and staff are FIRMLY in the "do the same as we've always done, NEVER change" camp.

The more I see how roads continue to be overbuilt and poorly designed, the more amazed I become that our LRT is a reality. It’s like the Regional government has a split personality.

Yes, exactly this. I really didn't understand it for a while. I think regional engineers, while they don't exactly prioritize transit, they do...legitimize it, where as cycling (and even walking...how they think people get to bus stops I'm not sure) they still don't treat as actual transportation.

As for the LRT (which has plenty of the anti-cycling/anti-walking policy in the design) I feel one of the biggest selling features of it to the regional staff and council was some combination of "we're a big city" with "developer developer developers" (and not in how Steve Balmer meant it).

To be honest, I don't see these things as bad, the development that resulted from the LRT has been nothing short of transformative, but I sure wish that the other half of the regions split brain wasn't firmly in the suburban wasteland mindset.

[KevinL]

Another influence on the regional mindset, I think, is that they only manage the regional roads (ie, the BIG roads). This makes them feel all RRs must be high capacity, built for heavy trucks, and do not need to consider 'smaller' concerns. If both big and small roads fell under one umbrella, I think we would have a different mindset.

[danbrotherston]

Another influence on the regional mindset, I think, is that they only manage the regional roads (ie, the BIG roads). This makes them feel all RRs must be high capacity, built for heavy trucks, and do not need to consider 'smaller' concerns. If both big and small roads fell under one umbrella, I think we would have a different mindset.

Yeah, I mean that comes back to their misguided beliefs about cycling...that it isn't a "big" concern...the number of regional staff who fully believe that cycling should be a city thing because people don't bike "within" the region, well I know that it isn't every engineer, but it's entirely too many. They are in charge of regional transportation, so they should be building high capacity high speed safe cycling links within the region.

[tomh009]

Another influence on the regional mindset, I think, is that they only manage the regional roads (ie, the BIG roads). This makes them feel all RRs must be high capacity, built for heavy trucks, and do not need to consider 'smaller' concerns. If both big and small roads fell under one umbrella, I think we would have a different mindset.

Yeah, I mean that comes back to their misguided beliefs about cycling...that it isn't a "big" concern...the number of regional staff who fully believe that cycling should be a city thing because people don't bike "within" the region, well I know that it isn't every engineer, but it's entirely too many. They are in charge of regional transportation, so they should be building high capacity high speed safe cycling links within the region.

The individual engineers don't set the regional transportation strategies and priorities, though, they only implement those. Who sets them? The regional council? Regional staff managers?

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, I mean that comes back to their misguided beliefs about cycling...that it isn't a "big" concern...the number of regional staff who fully believe that cycling should be a city thing because people don't bike "within" the region, well I know that it isn't every engineer, but it's entirely too many. They are in charge of regional transportation, so they should be building high capacity high speed safe cycling links within the region.

The individual engineers don't set the regional transportation strategies and priorities, though, they only implement those. Who sets them? The regional council? Regional staff managers?

This is as I understand it, and I may indeed be missing pieces.

There are more or less 4 groups involved, all with parts to play in this situation:

1.  What I think you mean by "individual engineers", which is to say lower level regional employees who are actually responsible for designing roads.

You suggest that these folks don't set priorities and strategies, and you are absolutely right. But that's not to say they don't have power over designs. The best example of this is the Highland Rd. widening. The engineers in that case proposed near perfect cycling infrastructure. Basically just an implementation of the very best designs available in regionally approved design guides (in this case I think OTM Book 18 and associated engineering standards). Now yes, they still accommodated the region's policy on, in my opinion, excessively wide turning radii on residential streets, and unnecessary road widenings (literally we were told that the road would be at capacity in 20-40 years, so it had to be widened today...like REALLY, WTF).  And if the design had been constrained by right of way width in the corridor they would have been forced to compromise the active transportation infrastructure in favour of more space for cars. But in plenty of other road construction projects, engineers who are facing similarly unconstrained rights of way do not implement good designs for cycling. It is clear that the level of understanding and ability of the individual engineers absolutely does matter in whether what gets built is good or mediocure.

2. The second group, would be contract engineers, so basically instead of having in house staff do the design work, the region hires an outside firm.

This group, is more or less the same as the other groups, with the slightly different restriction that they aim to please the senior leadership even more, as future contracts may be affected by that ability.  I.e., they effectively have less job security, so are less willing to push the limits.

3. Council

This group, we all know well, and is the group we need most to support our policies, because ultimately the buck stops with them.  Unfortunately, with the exception of Tom Galloway, few are in any way ambitious and certainly not progressive on cycling policy. Worse, they, in my opinion, seem far far to accepting of the toxic anti-cycling policies coming out of their senior management teams. They trust them when they are wrong, they trust them when they say "we are totally implementing choice, ha ha". Basically these folks set high level policy, that sounds good on paper, but have generally been unwilling to hold staff to actually implement that high level policy.

4. Senior Management Staff

And everyone's favourite punching bag, high level management.  Frankly, I think this is a large part of the problems at the region. Senior management is responsible for both pushing lower level staff to prioritize motor vehicles (including transit, to be fair), and also for ... pushing or misleading (choose your verb based on your particular feelings) council into believing that they are implementing a high level strategy of choice, which is not reflected in the actual transportation infrastructure that is built.

FWIW, things like the Moving Forward 2010 transportation plan, where the stated strategy of prioritizing choice is, in my opinion, directly contradicted by the actual implementation proposed (which does not provide choice), is a collaboration all three groups (plus "stakeholders"). Other engineering standards guides may involve various groups more or less, but I believe that large projects like design guides and plans generally involve senior management and council.

So there's plenty of blame to go around, I really don't think anyone at the region (with the possible exception of Tom Galloway and also the team which designed Highland Rd. as well as a few select others) is actually prioritizing transportation choice (as the official strategy claims), let alone prioritizing other modes than motor vehicles, and when there are so many people working against you, it feels insurmountable to change that. I've been to council, I've quoted design guidelines which stated the design that individual engineers proposed was dangerous and contrary to design guides, at that meeting senior management publicly stated I was wrong (I was not), and council took their word for it. I've seen all three (four) of those groups culpable, and I have very little faith in any of them. I have no idea how to overcome this, both the obstacle to safe cycling, and my own complete loss of confidence in change at a regional level.

Of course, it's also the same senior leadership team which pushed for the protected bike lane pilot...so sometimes I don't know what to think, but the exceptions seem few and far between.

[jamincan]

Has anyone else watched 'Yes, Minister'? I don't know for sure that's the sort of situation we have here, but it definitely seems like the career management at the region carries on doing things the same way and does just enough to say that they've done what council asks of them. New blood would probably do a lot of good (just as it does in any other organization), but I think it would be really hard to replace Thomas Schmidt without any clear cause.