(05-18-2016, 10:24 PM)Canard Wrote: I don't think you can just "narrow the lanes" though, can you? I mean, there's a design width for a lane, it's not like they just made them fatter here, did they?
You can, infact narrow the lanes. We've seen the Region do it for a number of road reconstruction projects, where they'll trim lane widths to make room for other things within the right-of-way (often times bike lanes). I know that the Region seems to be sticking to ~3.35m lane widths for their roads, while other municipalities are trying out lanes as narrow as 3.0m.
In this case though, widening the sidewalk would mean moving the curbs, which would mean moving catch basins, etc. This would probably only happen during a full reconstruction and I could see the Region spending the extra money in this location to achieve a more pedestrian friendly environment.