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Cycling in Waterloo Region
Having the lane in the middle is way less than idea, it assumes you aren't going to stop anywhere, you have to cross traffic to get in and out of the lane. There is one over Hwy 400 on the 7, it looks horrible. It can be safe but infrastructure that significantly slows journeys down doesn't encourage people to use it correctly.

The idea reminds me of the mess in Preston, where the MUP starts at the gas station, crosses king street with poor priority, then a large condo driveway, a plaza, business parking lot and riverside park all in the space of 800m. You then need to cross road if you are heading into Preston to catch the bike lane that starts 80m further down the road. Sure it is safer then what existed before, but it is garbage, has no way to legally ride the 25 meters as you cross King st. Living near by I see countless people just stay on the sidewalk

Having said that I am less scared of the LRT then drivers, but again if you need to cross the tracks that is another hazard. The current Northfield design does more harm then good. It scares potential people from riding bikes for transportation, puts those that do in serious danger and is a recent construction project. A better solution if possible would be to remove the merging slip roads, control the on off ramps with lights, that way drivers will be forced to slow and look.
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(07-29-2022, 02:11 AM)robd Wrote: Having the lane in the middle is way less than idea, it assumes you aren't going to stop anywhere, you have to cross traffic to get in and out of the lane. There is one over Hwy 400 on the 7, it looks horrible. It can be safe but infrastructure that significantly slows journeys down doesn't encourage people to use it correctly.

The idea reminds me of the mess in Preston, where the MUP starts at the gas station, crosses king street with poor priority, then a large condo driveway, a plaza, business parking lot and riverside park all in the space of 800m. You then need to cross road if you are heading into Preston to catch the bike lane that starts 80m further down the road. Sure it is safer then what existed before, but it is garbage, has no way to legally ride the 25 meters as you cross King st. Living near by I see countless people just stay on the sidewalk

Having said that I am less scared of the LRT then drivers, but again if you need to cross the tracks that is another hazard. The current Northfield design does more harm then good. It scares potential people from riding bikes for transportation, puts those that do in serious danger and is a recent construction project. A better solution if possible would be to remove the merging slip roads, control the on off ramps with lights, that way drivers will be forced to slow and look.

There is nowhere to stop in the middle of the interchange. The MUT would only continue in the middle of the road in the interchange.

You do have to cross traffic to get to it, but this can be done well, and I'd rather cross the traffic at a controlled crossing than on a slip lane where cars are doing 90km/h.

The same is true of the tracks, they have to be crossed regardless.

You are right, that is a better option and way back at the beginning of this discussion I raised that as a better option. But that option requires MTO's co-operation and a willingness to prioritize car traffic. 

The thing a middle MUT gives you is a VASTLY better design than we have today, with ZERO cost...there's no requirement to inconvenience drivers one bit, all you get is a better and safer experience for cyclists and pedestrians.

The fact we didn't do it speaks to not just a lack of willingness to prioritize cyclists and pedestrians but an utter lack interest or care for those users. Our engineers slap the industry standard garbage on the road and then stand behind their standards any time they are questioned. They don't CARE that it's garbage....they've ticked the "active transportation" box that council has forced on them and that's as far as their care goes.
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If we're going to the trouble of building a MUT there, why would we shove it in the middle? Why not just put it along the side like it is on Franklin and every other road in the region? It is more convenient for cyclists, connects naturally to the Parkside MUT, and could remain to the right of the slip lane until it can cross more safely at a perpendicular angle.

A major concern I have with the new cycling infrastructure they are putting into place around the region is that there is no clear and consistent form for it. We have bike lanes in some place, we have "protected" lanes in others (ie. Queens Blvd.), we have fully-ish separated in others (King St in Uptown), and we have bi-directional "protected" lanes in others. In particular, the mix of bi-directional tracks with the lanes on both sides is something that I am concerned with as it makes it much harder for people to act in a predictable way because it is harder for people to understand what is happening at any given intersection.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the interfaces between different modes are often completely ignored. Consider where the Water Street bidirectional track ends at, I think, Weber. There is absolutely no hint to cyclists what they are supposed to do if proceeding onward on Water Street, and then there is no clue to drivers then, what the cyclist might do. The saving grace is that most of these problems exist on relatively low-traffic roads.

I'm already uncomfortable with the bidirectional tracks, the idea of adding an entirely new form where cyclists are coming from the middle boulevard just seems entirely ill-conceived to me in the grander scheme of things.
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(07-29-2022, 08:29 AM)jamincan Wrote: If we're going to the trouble of building a MUT there, why would we shove it in the middle? Why not just put it along the side like it is on Franklin and every other road in the region? It is more convenient for cyclists, connects naturally to the Parkside MUT, and could remain to the right of the slip lane until it can cross more safely at a perpendicular angle.

A major concern I have with the new cycling infrastructure they are putting into place around the region is that there is no clear and consistent form for it. We have bike lanes in some place, we have "protected" lanes in others (ie. Queens Blvd.), we have fully-ish separated in others (King St in Uptown), and we have bi-directional "protected" lanes in others. In particular, the mix of bi-directional tracks with the lanes on both sides is something that I am concerned with as it makes it much harder for people to act in a predictable way because it is harder for people to understand what is happening at any given intersection.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the interfaces between different modes are often completely ignored. Consider where the Water Street bidirectional track ends at, I think, Weber. There is absolutely no hint to cyclists what they are supposed to do if proceeding onward on Water Street, and then there is no clue to drivers then, what the cyclist might do. The saving grace is that most of these problems exist on relatively low-traffic roads.

I'm already uncomfortable with the bidirectional tracks, the idea of adding an entirely new form where cyclists are coming from the middle boulevard just seems entirely ill-conceived to me in the grander scheme of things.

Crossing the slip lane at a right angle is still extremely unsafe. Drivers are traveling at 90+km/h and are not looking for pedestrians or cyclists. These are dangerous locations that simply do not exist in the Netherlands. This is exactly how my partner was hit.

That's why going up the middle is safer.

As for convenience, yes, it is inconvenient, however, there's only room for one MUT on the road, so if you put it on the side it's only convenient for cyclists going one direction. In this case, cyclists are inconvenienced in both directions...which is a trade off to be sure, but it's one I'd easily make. Also, if we were willing to be smarter about our lights we could use half crossings to further optimize the crossing.

"Cyclists coming from the middle of the boulevard"...at a controlled intersection...drivers who cannot deal with this are 100% at fault. There is literally no cross traffic for the entire distance of the proposed MUT, that's why it's a good idea. It's a very rare case that something like this makes sense, and it only makes sense within this specific context and political situation. Like I said, it wouldn't be *MY* choice of infra (I'd eliminate the slip ramps and put in signalized intersections, which would both make the road safe, and make room for separated infra on both sides), but in a political situation where that is impossible, I do think this is probably the best option, but it requires outside the box thinking.

As for consistency, I certainly agree that it should be a goal, but I think it is a secondary goal to making infra intuitive and context sensitive. Here infra is not at all consistent, all those types of infra you describe and many others all exist here depending on the needs and context of the road. But the design is intuitive so their use is pretty clear even without consistent infra. Now, I do think our engineers struggle with that, both a lack of care and interest but also legitimately lack of experience.
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(07-28-2022, 10:33 PM)plam Wrote: I think what's going on here is that ac3r is strongly in favour of ideal solutions. Clearly, running a bike lane in the middle of the train tracks is less ideal than having a whole segregated bike infrastructure.

That doesn’t explain why he is so negative on the centre track idea, to the point that one of the supposedly conclusive arguments he gave against it actually rules out his preferred solution (a completely separate bridge for active transportation).

Quote:But I tend to believe in the quote of politics being the art of the possible, and I'm also in favour of incremental change, even if it's not perfect. I'd rather have a solution which is less crappy than what exists now, versus holding out for the perfect solution. (And I think that in the context of the LRT we would be looking at a zillion car lanes on King St now if we had held out for the ideal solution.)
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(07-29-2022, 08:29 AM)jamincan Wrote: If we're going to the trouble of building a MUT there, why would we shove it in the middle? Why not just put it along the side like it is on Franklin and every other road in the region? It is more convenient for cyclists, connects naturally to the Parkside MUT, and could remain to the right of the slip lane until it can cross more safely at a perpendicular angle.

It’s an idea for what could have been done, not a serious proposal to renovate the bridge now.

To implement the idea now would require rebuilding the LRT all the way across the bridge. It might be possible to do this without closing anything for long (other than reducing the road to one lane in each direction), by first building the new LRT tracks in the innermost traffic lanes, then replacing the existing LRT tracks with the MUT, then replacing the sidewalks and bicycle lanes by new outer traffic lanes, but it would be a huge project regardless.

Doing it at the time of LRT construction, by contrast, would have been easy: first build the new MUT, then convert the existing sidewalks and bicycle lanes into new road lanes, then build the LRT tracks. I doubt it would have increased costs at all.

Starting from where we are, I’m not sure what to do about the bridge itself, but the crossing proposed as part of that large development on the Kraus site should definitely go ahead (I won’t express an opinion on bridge vs. tunnel for that one!), and should be designed to connect well to everything on both sides, not just the new development.
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(07-28-2022, 10:33 PM)plam Wrote: I think what's going on here is that ac3r is strongly in favour of ideal solutions. Clearly, running a bike lane in the middle of the train tracks is less ideal than having a whole segregated bike infrastructure.

But I tend to believe in the quote of politics being the art of the possible, and I'm also in favour of incremental change, even if it's not perfect. I'd rather have a solution which is less crappy than what exists now, versus holding out for the perfect solution. (And I think that in the context of the LRT we would be looking at a zillion car lanes on King St now if we had held out for the ideal solution.)

Weirdly, we are in that situation now. The current solution is actually better than what was there before (i.e. nothing).
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(07-29-2022, 11:24 AM)timc Wrote:
(07-28-2022, 10:33 PM)plam Wrote: I think what's going on here is that ac3r is strongly in favour of ideal solutions. Clearly, running a bike lane in the middle of the train tracks is less ideal than having a whole segregated bike infrastructure.

But I tend to believe in the quote of politics being the art of the possible, and I'm also in favour of incremental change, even if it's not perfect. I'd rather have a solution which is less crappy than what exists now, versus holding out for the perfect solution. (And I think that in the context of the LRT we would be looking at a zillion car lanes on King St now if we had held out for the ideal solution.)

Weirdly, we are in that situation now. The current solution is actually better than what was there before (i.e. nothing).

Disagree.

The lane on Northfield cost money and it cost opportunity. And yet it provides zero value, people who would cycle there before, will still, and nobody new will cycle because of that lane. So we've spent money, and achieved nothing. Even worse, people (often bad faith people, but sometimes just really stupid people) will point to that lane and complain "see we spend all this money on bike lanes and nobody cycles here".

EVEN WORSE THAN THAT...regional engineers look at that lane, and how little cycling it gets, and the conclude that building cycling infra won't meaningfully change the mode share in the region.  This is not hypothetical, this is EXACTLY what they did for the moving forward 2020 transportation plan.

So no, the Northfield bike lanes are actively harmful, they are worse than nothing.
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(07-29-2022, 10:20 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(07-28-2022, 10:33 PM)plam Wrote: I think what's going on here is that ac3r is strongly in favour of ideal solutions. Clearly, running a bike lane in the middle of the train tracks is less ideal than having a whole segregated bike infrastructure.

That doesn’t explain why he is so negative on the centre track idea, to the point that one of the supposedly conclusive arguments he gave against it actually rules out his preferred solution (a completely separate bridge for active transportation).

Because it's a bad idea when it's possible to build something so much better that doesn't force cyclists to continue to have bad infrastructure. I mean, sure, it might work? But it's possible to design something superior.

If I had the time I could throw together an idea in AutoCAD that could provide cyclists a fairly good alternative. I even showed a very good bridge overpass example in California that illustrates how you can have a safe and aesthetically pleasing piece of infrastructure. I also linked a thesis from a UW School of Architecture grad whom studied how it's possible and ideal to build the best infrastructure we can.

Really, all you'd need is a bridge going over the highway that can bypass all of Northfield and the highway. It wouldn't be hard to design and link up with the rest of the bike lanes. The Kraus development is proposing such a thing even, though it would be superior to have one built and owned by the region to avoid potential conflicts that often arise when private infrastructure is relied on by the public (this can mean things like liability, winter maintenance, potential for them to close it to public use at their will etc).

Like plam said, I'm looking at this from the perspective that can allow the most ideal solution, rather than settling for a bottom of the barrel answer. To me, riding between train tracks and many lanes of traffic is barely a step above riding right on Northfield, even if it's moderately safer. It would simply be an awful way to traverse the area. I think cyclists deserve better at this point if we're collectively going to promote cycling.
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(07-30-2022, 01:39 AM)ac3r Wrote:
(07-29-2022, 10:20 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: That doesn’t explain why he is so negative on the centre track idea, to the point that one of the supposedly conclusive arguments he gave against it actually rules out his preferred solution (a completely separate bridge for active transportation).

Because it's a bad idea when it's possible to build something so much better that doesn't force cyclists to continue to have bad infrastructure. I mean, sure, it might work? But it's possible to design something superior.

If I had the time I could throw together an idea in AutoCAD that could provide cyclists a fairly good alternative. I even showed a very good bridge overpass example in California that illustrates how you can have a safe and aesthetically pleasing piece of infrastructure. I also linked a thesis from a UW School of Architecture grad whom studied how it's possible and ideal to build the best infrastructure we can.

Really, all you'd need is a bridge going over the highway that can bypass all of Northfield and the highway. It wouldn't be hard to design and link up with the rest of the bike lanes. The Kraus development is proposing such a thing even, though it would be superior to have one built and owned by the region to avoid potential conflicts that often arise when private infrastructure is relied on by the public (this can mean things like liability, winter maintenance, potential for them to close it to public use at their will etc).

Like plam said, I'm looking at this from the perspective that can allow the most ideal solution, rather than settling for a bottom of the barrel answer. To me, riding between train tracks and many lanes of traffic is barely a step above riding right on Northfield, even if it's moderately safer. It would simply be an awful way to traverse the area. I think cyclists deserve better at this point if we're collectively going to promote cycling.

Nobody here is arguing that with infinite money and infinite political will that it is possible to design something even better, but that isn't the world we live in. The point of the centre MUT is that--at the time of LRT construction--it would not have cost any more money (at least not a meaningful amount) than what was built, but would not have made us world famous for building garbage.

I certainly am of the opinion that we should demand better, I don't think I've made that a secret, but it is also possible to discuss what is possible and what should have been done with the finite resources (political and financial) that we do have, and the trade offs there.

If you want to make a proposal, you're welcome to, but I do think that we've discussed a large number of alternatives here and all of their pros and cons, and I don't really understand what you are proposing that is different, there are fundamental geometry problems here.

You either, a) remove the slip ramps, b) cross the slip ramps, or c) deviate a significant distance away from the interchange in order to go around the slip ramps.

I believe that a) would be the best option, but I don't think was the political will to do it.
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TBH I don't really get the point in this discussion anyway. It's too late to have bike trains, so really the only option is either settle for what already exists or demand our region make safe, sensible alternatives like a public bridge. That won't happen though because most are pretty apathetic and our councilors and engineers don't care that people are getting hit by cars and that this infrastructure is so pathetic that its made Waterloo famous for something other than tech startups and similar. We're the laughing stock on /r/fuckcars now.
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(07-30-2022, 01:39 AM)ac3r Wrote: Really, all you'd need is a bridge going over the highway that can bypass all of Northfield and the highway. It wouldn't be hard to design and link up with the rest of the bike lanes. The Kraus development is proposing such a thing even, though it would be superior to have one built and owned by the region to avoid potential conflicts that often arise when private infrastructure is relied on by the public (this can mean things like liability, winter maintenance, potential for them to close it to public use at their will etc).

I see several problems with this:
  • Zero areas to move to if there was an emergency be it personal or external; when in a bike gutter, you often have a sidewalk to move to. Where does one go if you're stuck between not only two fences, but active railroad tracks two railings?
  • Re: the last point...if you fell and needed help, there is a lesser chance anyone would see you to help. What if a rider had heat stroke? A normal stroke? Cardiac arrest? Nobody would see them but maybe another cyclist
  • How do you propose these this would be cleared of snow?
  • Or ice?

Just kidding, actually, you see the above problems with this proposal. Fortunately, they are non-problems, both in the original context of lanes on the Northfield bridge and in the context of a separate bridge. So I agree, we should definitely have a separate crossing of the expressway, probably a bridge (or a tunnel — that would eliminate the last 2 points from the list).

Quote:Like plam said, I'm looking at this from the perspective that can allow the most ideal solution, rather than settling for a bottom of the barrel answer. To me, riding between train tracks and many lanes of traffic is barely a step above riding right on Northfield, even if it's moderately safer. It would simply be an awful way to traverse the area. I think cyclists deserve better at this point if we're collectively going to promote cycling.

Not moderately safer, very much safer: the difference between dangerous and safe (and also between feeling dangerous and feeling safe).
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(07-29-2022, 06:10 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: EVEN WORSE THAN THAT...regional engineers look at that lane, and how little cycling it gets, and the conclude that building cycling infra won't meaningfully change the mode share in the region.  This is not hypothetical, this is EXACTLY what they did for the moving forward 2020 transportation plan.

It is not, however, the only data point as a lot of other cycling infra has been added as well. In fact, the higher usage of the other new cycling infra can be used to point out that the Northfield infra is not getting much use because of the poor implementation.
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(07-30-2022, 02:14 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(07-29-2022, 06:10 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: EVEN WORSE THAN THAT...regional engineers look at that lane, and how little cycling it gets, and the conclude that building cycling infra won't meaningfully change the mode share in the region.  This is not hypothetical, this is EXACTLY what they did for the moving forward 2020 transportation plan.

It is not, however, the only data point as a lot of other cycling infra has been added as well. In fact, the higher usage of the other new cycling infra can be used to point out that the Northfield infra is not getting much use because of the poor implementation.

I'm not saying that Northfield specifically is the single cause of the regional engineers arguing against bike infra.

But I can tell you first hand, that regional engineers have used the poor performance of their garbage infrastructure as an argument against building more infra.

I can tell you this first hand because this is an actual conversation I've had with actual engineers who are responsible for creating our transportation plans. They have used the poor performance of infra like Northfield as inputs to their traffic model, which they then used to argue that building cycling infra wasn't an effective way to shift modeshare.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I did make the argument that their infra was poor and disconnected and their response was..."oh well this is the data we have".

There is no exaggeration here, this is literally a key reason that our current moving forward master plan is so unambitious. They even showed me the plan they considered, doing things like shrinking Westmount into 3 lanes with infra, and they said that their modeling indicated this would not increase cycling modeshare.

Now, they COULD look at other infra and come to the conclusion that building a high quality connected network is important, but that is not the conclusion they came to, for what reason, I'll leave that up to you to decide...you already know what I think of our engineers.
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(07-30-2022, 04:15 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: There is no exaggeration here, this is literally a key reason that our current moving forward master plan is so unambitious. They even showed me the plan they considered, doing things like shrinking Westmount into 3 lanes with infra, and they said that their modeling indicated this would not increase cycling modeshare.

Don’t worry, even if a decision was taken to shrink Westmount to 3 lanes I’m sure they would find a way to mess it up and avoid growing cycling mode share.
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