Cycling in Waterloo Region

[Acitta]

Recently, a section of Highland Rd. was rebuilt. This section includes three strip malls, 4 grocery stores and lots of other businesses, yet no bike lanes were added in the process, even though it is a wide and heavily trafficked road. I would like to know why. Cyclists go where everybody else goes like grocery and other stores. Bicycle lanes should be built on the streets where the businesses are that cyclists patronize.

Highland is a Regional Rd., the region is very far behind on bike infra, the failure to put it here was a huge mistake, but unfortunately, not an uncommon one in the region.

If you're looking for the reason why that particular road was missed, locals near other projects have successfully fought the region to have some sense and actually build good bike lanes, I'll point out that the locals on that road are likely to be lower income than many other roads.  Frankly, it's shameful how badly that was handled, as even the pedestrian facilities are shit, and as you point out, it's a very important roads for non-drivers.

This is a major problem with with arbitrarily dividing responsibility for roads between the city and the Region. For instance, in the 18 years I have lived in Kitchener, no effort has been made to build sidewalks on Victoria St. North. Seems like one thing that makes for a good argument for unification.

[goggolor]

I hope the project will also include adding bike parking to businesses along the route - I use the IHT to get to Kishki World Foods plaza in the summer but there is no safe place to lock a bike. Street View shows that the Sobeys plaza on Belmont has hundreds of parking spots for cars, and two U-racks for parking a total of 4 bikes.

[danbrotherston]

Highland is a Regional Rd., the region is very far behind on bike infra, the failure to put it here was a huge mistake, but unfortunately, not an uncommon one in the region.

If you're looking for the reason why that particular road was missed, locals near other projects have successfully fought the region to have some sense and actually build good bike lanes, I'll point out that the locals on that road are likely to be lower income than many other roads.  Frankly, it's shameful how badly that was handled, as even the pedestrian facilities are shit, and as you point out, it's a very important roads for non-drivers.

This is a major problem with with arbitrarily dividing responsibility for roads between the city and the Region. For instance, in the 18 years I have lived in Kitchener, no effort has been made to build sidewalks on Victoria St. North. Seems like one thing that makes for a good argument for unification.

And what if unification lead to all roads being designed and built by the traffic engineers who don't feel the need to put sidewalks on high speed high volume highways?

I do see the point of separating a street grid into major arterials and minor roads, but I do agree the current organization is probably not optimal for roads.  But in our specific situation, it's just as, or even more likely that amalgamation would lead to the region running the transportation show.

[ijmorlan]

Queens Blvd. and Belmont Ave. will be going from 4 lanes to 3, which is a much safer configuration, which should also hopefully slow traffic to a reasonable speed.

Ironically, this will probably improve traffic flow. Not increase speed, necessarily, but make it flow more smoothly — reduce occurrences of straight-through traffic getting jammed up behind traffic waiting to turn. Which is better — if we’re going to pay for all this road space, we might as well have some of it devoted to actually moving traffic.

[danbrotherston]

Queens Blvd. and Belmont Ave. will be going from 4 lanes to 3, which is a much safer configuration, which should also hopefully slow traffic to a reasonable speed.

Ironically, this will probably improve traffic flow. Not increase speed, necessarily, but make it flow more smoothly — reduce occurrences of straight-through traffic getting jammed up behind traffic waiting to turn. Which is better — if we’re going to pay for all this road space, we might as well have some of it devoted to actually moving traffic.

That too.  Of course, people (and to a lesser extent our traffic engineers) use a different meaning of "traffic flow"...but this is definitely an advantage.

[clasher]

Is the entire length of Queen's Blvd. going down to 3 lanes? I often ride from Highland to Westheights and find the few parked cars to be the biggest impediment to traffic flow... for parts of the road it seems like it's effectively a two-lane road already with enough parked cars to make it that way.

[danbrotherston]

Is the entire length of Queen's Blvd. going down to 3 lanes? I often ride from Highland to Westheights and find the few parked cars to be the biggest impediment to traffic flow... for parts of the road it seems like it's effectively a two-lane road already with enough parked cars to make it that way.

It will be 3 lanes from Westheights Dr. to Belmont Ave.

And yes, parked cars make it effectively a two lane road...but even worse than a two lane road since it permits speeding dangerously around left turning vehicles...

It's probably the worst configuration possible with that space.

[bpoland]

I wonder how they are going to handle Belmont from Highland to Queen's -- it doesn't seem wide enough to have 2 lanes of traffic plus 2 protected bike lanes.

[clasher]

I wonder how they are going to handle Belmont from Highland to Queen's -- it doesn't seem wide enough to have 2 lanes of traffic plus 2 protected bike lanes.

They likely won't be protected there since there are two driveways for the plaza as well as a bus stop and then a right-turn slip. A bunch of paint will have to keep us safe.

[danbrotherston]

I wonder how they are going to handle Belmont from Highland to Queen's -- it doesn't seem wide enough to have 2 lanes of traffic plus 2 protected bike lanes.

They likely won't be protected there since there are two driveways for the plaza as well as a bus stop and then a right-turn slip. A bunch of paint will have to keep us safe.

You are correct, it is not wide enough, so it won't have protected bike lanes, just painted one.

That being said, I'm not so concerned there, it's a relatively quite residential street at that point, painted bike lanes are probably sufficient in my opinion.

[bpoland]

Has anyone else tried Dropbike yet? I tried to unlock 6 different bikes near Charles St. terminal yesterday and they all said "this bike is not available, please try another one" or something to that effect. I kept walking to another one at Victoria and King which did unlock but the gears didn't shift reliably and it felt like there was a lot of resistance.

I tried to contact them about the issues but haven't gotten a response nearly 24 hours later, even though they say the average response time is 2 hours.

Then this morning I get an email saying I've been charged $10 for a "parking violation" with no details about what the violation was.

Overall I am not very impressed. It's too bad because the pricing (without "parking violations") is quite reasonable.

[timc]

I rode a dropbike yesterday. It was OK for the price. Probably would have been better if I could figure out how to adjust the seat height, if it is even possible. I too tried to contact them and haven't received a response yet.

[bpoland]

The one I used had a quick release lever on the seat post but I had to wiggle/pull/push quite hard to get it to move once that was opened.

[timc]

There was a lever on mine as well, but I could not get the seat to budge at all even when released. I guess I should try harder next time.

[Bob_McBob]

CBC has an article up about the cyclist who live tweeted after being hit by a car last week. He's apparently been hit four times in the last 3 years. I still can't believe the driver refused to even get out and check if he was ok or acknowledge him in any way.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener...-1.5179974