Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

Looks like another person has been injured in our community as a direct result of negligence by regional transportation engineers.

Caught in the tracks turning left off of Moore? I saw the same thing happen as I was driving a couple of months ago. I was waiting at the traffic light to cross Moore, and was about to put my car in P and assist when he got up and left. Looks like today’s victim wasn’t as lucky.

[tomh009]

They did add (not very good) signage indicating that the sidewalk is actually a MUT.

Was this a left turn (the bike is on the median) or going straight and getting a wheel jammed into the tracks?

[panamaniac]

Or something else entirely? The photos don’t seem to give anything away.

[danbrotherston]

I am not clear on the situation...I only know what I saw on twitter...but they are a considerable distance past Moore...I suspect something else went wrong.

But what is clear is that if the specified cycling infrastructure was implemented (it absolutely was not, signing the sidewalk as a MUT does not change the fact that the engineers were not qualified to build and not capable of building the infrastructure that was specified) this type of situation would not occur.

[ac3r]

Of course, given there continue to be deaths and injuries at this intersection...a change is imperative, but I suspect that in 10 years we will either question why this intersection is so unsafe even though it was rebuilt so recently...

I’m not expecting much from the construction. Probably an undersized pedestrian island with completely flat curbs. Might as well save the money and just do it with paint.

Really the island should be a full lane in width, with massive concrete ends that make it impossible for anything less than a concrete truck to violate it.

I read a post on Reddit where someone suggested a better idea than an island would be a tunnel under the road. It would be safer and keep the flow of foot/bike traffic on the trail moving at a constant pace. They're pretty common in Europe, so I don't see why we couldn't build the same here, except for the fact the city would likely say it costs too much money.

[ijmorlan]

I read a post on Reddit where someone suggested a better idea than an island would be a tunnel under the road. It would be safer and keep the flow of foot/bike traffic on the trail moving at a constant pace. They're pretty common in Europe, so I don't see why we couldn't build the same here, except for the fact the city would likely say it costs too much money.

Where are the sewer lines at that point?

The answer to that question pretty much determines whether tunnelling would be excessively expensive or absurdly expensive.

That’s not to say that tunnels can’t be appropriate in some places, but where there is no existing grade change it’s a lot of work to put one in, and needs to extend over a long distance for approach ramps. Then you get concerns about hemmed-in spaces.

On the other hand, maybe the trick is to spend lots of money on bicycle infrastructure, rather than little bits. It works for the road network…instead of begging for minimal funding we just go ahead and spend millions on every project, adding unnecessary lanes just because.

[jamincan]

I definitely have a concern that ineffective spending on bike infrastructure could backfire. Until there is a feasible network, uptake will be limited, which could be seen as an indictment on cycling as transportation rather than a reflection of the inadequacy of the system.

[tomh009]

Do we have any metrics on the number of bike lanes, or connectivity, or anything like that?

My perception is that while the trail network has not been substantially extended (though some parts have been improved), the amount of MUTs and dedicated on-street bicycle lanes has increased substantially over the past 2-3 years, even if we ignore the temporary "COVID lanes". It's surely still far from a comprehensive network, but do we have some data on what gains are being made?

[danbrotherston]

The question of what infrastructure is justified is very interesting.

A tunnel would certainly be very expensive, we're talking more than 10 million. It would also be extremely disruptive, and would involve substantial property taking on both sides, city cafe would be no more. It would also form an obstruction in the area and increase the social safety issue in this area. Further, it would require cyclists and pedestrians to climb a big grade (of course this could be solved by raising the road instead, but that would create even more obstruction and cost probably 2-3 times as much).

Overall, a bridge or tunnel has substantial costs, both direct monetary costs, and also other costs. In some cases it might be warranted, or the context makes it more suitable (the roundabouts on Ottawa at Homer-Watson could easily have been raised for wide safe airy tunnels underneath with minimal disruption in a wide open suburban context for example), but in an urban context like Victoria and West I don't believe the costs are justified because of the next part.

Now, the other important question is who benefits from doing this. People (including past me) might immediately say, "well cyclists duh"...but much like grade separating transit, that implies an unchangeable priority. Right now (and after the reconstruction), the region prioritizes road users over the trail users...a tunnel would, at great cost, raise the priority of the trail users, however, the other option is to instead share the priority more equitably between the two groups of users, they could signalize the crossing. Now, all of a sudden, it is no longer the trail users which are benefitting from a tunnel...

In the Netherlands, tunnels are often built and justified by the motor traffic in an areas, basically when car traffic would be too congested as a result of the measures necessary to make a level crossing safe (narrowing the road, lowering speeds, signalized crossings, etc.) There can be some benefit to other users, not waiting for a signal, for example, but like grade separating transit, the main beneficiaries are actually drivers, but only because there is an implicit assumption that drivers would not be given priority otherwise.

[danbrotherston]

Do we have any metrics on the number of bike lanes, or connectivity, or anything like that?

My perception is that while the trail network has not been substantially extended (though some parts have been improved), the amount of MUTs and dedicated on-street bicycle lanes has increased substantially over the past 2-3 years, even if we ignore the temporary "COVID lanes". It's surely still far from a comprehensive network, but do we have some data on what gains are being made?

I'd say this is not true, there have been a number of projects, (some, planned earlier and delayed).

The Homer-Watson MUT is brand new, as well as the one on Courtland Ave under the higheway is now official, Ottawa's lanes/MUTs have been extended east, the one on Lexington is a few years old now, maybe 4 years...there are new bike lanes on Stirling, Krug, and planned for Mill. I am probably missing others...those are just off the top of my head.

Plus the pilot project on Queens and Belmont was a significant piece of infrastructure....the Region's pilot upgraded the existing lanes on Columbia and University, plus added new ones on King and Albert.

I do think the region is making progress, although the main obstacles continue to be connectedness of the grid, e.g., the Homer-Watson MUT is hard to get too...and also a willingness to prioritize actual infra in constrained areas (Dundas is being rebuilt with mediocre painted bike lanes and the same engineers are fighting to force Lexington to painted bike lanes, by pitting cyclists against peds instead of against road space). I think both of these come back to the root issue at the region, which is that the engineers (backed by some of council) see their job as building roads for cars, anything else is a nice to have that isn't a priority and doesn't provide any economic benefit.

I don't think we'll make meaningful city wide progress beyond specific projects that are easy (like Homer-Watson) until the region changes their priorities...and I don't mean in a regional planning doc, which already claims to prioritize these things, but which is not in any meaningfulway actually guiding decision making.

I think we actually need to go further, the regional transportation planners need to decide to no longer prioritize growth in VMT....every single long term planning document right now assumes climate failure as a precondition of every planning decision we are making. Every single policy document assumes VMT will continue to grow at the current rate....

[tomh009]

Thanks. My perspective is DTK-centric, I don't get to suburbia much. I was thinking of streets like Queen and Belmont specifically, which do improve connectivity in the urban area. Hopefully some of the COVID lanes could be converted into permanent lanes, even if others may revert to their previous states. I would particularly like to see lanes on Frederick to take cyclists across the Expressway and connecting to the promised MUT on Victoria, and hopefully on Westmount. Those two would significantly help connectivity in (urban) Kitchener, I think.

[ac3r]

I read a post on Reddit where someone suggested a better idea than an island would be a tunnel under the road. It would be safer and keep the flow of foot/bike traffic on the trail moving at a constant pace. They're pretty common in Europe, so I don't see why we couldn't build the same here, except for the fact the city would likely say it costs too much money.

Where are the sewer lines at that point?

The answer to that question pretty much determines whether tunnelling would be excessively expensive or absurdly expensive.

Good point and I somehow didn't think of that. I am not too sure how deep the average sewer lines or any other utility runs on that part of Victoria. In fact the only other pedestrian tunnel crossing I can think of is this one here on Westmount just north of Highland, and I guess it goes just deep enough to not impact the sewer lines (unless there are none there, and storm water drains right into Henry Strum Creek).

[timc]

My feeling about the bike and trail network is that the extent is actually not that bad, it's the gaps that are the most frustrating. You have a route that is 95% decent, but you need to cross the expressway in the middle, or there is a road that doesn't have sidewalks, or local residents oppose a pathway because reasons. The IHT crossing at Victoria is one of those gaps.

This crossing is particularly vexing because it seems like there is more traffic using this trail crossing than there is crossing Victoria from Strange/West. I don't know if that is true. Is there a traffic study comparing those numbers? It probably depends on time of day, so I just might not be at that intersection at the right times.

[timc]

Good point and I somehow didn't think of that. I am not too sure how deep the average sewer lines or any other utility runs on that part of Victoria. In fact the only other pedestrian tunnel crossing I can think of is this one here on Westmount just north of Highland, and I guess it goes just deep enough to not impact the sewer lines (unless there are none there, and storm water drains right into Henry Strum Creek).

If we're including culverts, then there is also one that runs under Lexington where it crosses Laurel Creek.

[ijmorlan]

I think we actually need to go further, the regional transportation planners need to decide to no longer prioritize growth in VMT....every single long term planning document right now assumes climate failure as a precondition of every planning decision we are making. Every single policy document assumes VMT will continue to grow at the current rate....

This is key. We should be making a decision that increased motor vehicle traffic shall be carried by public transit. This means that the existing lanes are sufficient (subject to minor tweaks like how long turn lanes are, etc.), or even overbuilt (all those 4-lane roads with no turn lanes — remove the redundant lanes between intersections and rebuild the intersections with turn lanes); if space is needed to move more people it should be transit-only lanes.

The tricky bit is that transit needs to run on a much better schedule. Take the existing GRT network and run all of it every 10 minutes 18 hours a day, every 5 minutes during rush hour, and you would have a start. So initially we need to run a huge number of buses which aren’t really carrying very many people. Is the populace at large ready to understand that this is the way to go?