Waterloo Region Connected
Cycling in Waterloo Region - Printable Version

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RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - clasher - 06-08-2016

I use strava but only for long out of town recreational rides. I never track my commuting and errand riding. Most of my friends that strava treat it the same way.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Chris - 06-09-2016

(06-08-2016, 07:54 PM)clasher Wrote: I use strava but only for long out of town recreational rides. I never track my commuting and errand riding. Most of my friends that strava treat it the same way.

I use my watch to track everything and it automatically syncs to Strava. I'd like to think when Strava is parsing out the data they (or the cities using it) are smart enough to differentiate shorter point-to-point trips from longer round trips. I think all of info is useful whether they want to build out a network for commuters or recreational riders.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - chutten - 06-09-2016

I happened upon this at the intersection of the Laurel Trail and Spur Line Trail while riding to work this morning:
   

Back of the envelope we have... ~575 trips per day. If we assume 2 trips per person, the trail's seeing 288 daily active users (DAU). (gross oversimplifications: assuming each day of the week sees equal traffic, assuming each user takes 2 trips on average, assuming the counting methodology isn't flawed in some way... but still, almost 300 users per day)

And I'm one of them!


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - MidTowner - 06-09-2016

“Total to date” was the wrong term for them to use (there isn’t even an ‘as at’ date on the sign). They just mean “Total.”

But very interesting! Three hundred users a day is nothing to sneeze at, and if we assume that some people only bike or walk to their jobs (or elsewhere) some days of the week, that’s a lot of people that trail is serving. It would be really neat to see daily and hourly breakdowns of the counts, to better see how many are commuters and other types of users there are.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - zanate - 06-09-2016

(06-09-2016, 08:52 AM)chutten Wrote: Back of the envelope we have... ~575 trips per day. If we assume 2 trips per person, the trail's seeing 288 daily active users (DAU). (gross oversimplifications: assuming each day of the week sees equal traffic, assuming each user takes 2 trips on average, assuming the counting methodology isn't flawed in some way... but still, almost 300 users per day)

The counting is based on loop counters installed along Waterloo's trails in a number of locations, and I get the impression it's very good-- capable of detecting and distinguishing bikes and pedestrians, and recording direction.

I believe the open data is available here: http://opendata.city-of-waterloo.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets?q=Transportation&page=2&sort_by=relevance

The website is very flaky for me, and I don't know if it's because the site is broken or my work's web proxy is getting in the way.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - chutten - 06-09-2016

Well, here's the spurline loop counter... its data appears to be lumped into the Eco Counters Data product.

Lots of data to play with, there.

But yeah. opendata.arcgis.com: Bad Website, or Worst Webite?


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Pheidippides - 06-09-2016

I saw that sign the other day too. It wasn't clear to me if that was for the Roger or Laurel (Erb at Peppler) counter (it is too low to be network wide), it is actually closer to the Laurel counter.

I think it is a bit of an undercount because I suspect that a sizeable portion of users may get on after the counter near Roger to come to or through Uptown.

I also think the Erb/Peppler counter is an undercount too because so many people opt to go across Peppler between Erb and Bridgeport to use the pedestrian signal instead of waiting at the trail crossing at Bridgeport. It would be nice if they moved the pedestrian signal, but I think it would then be too close to the Devitt pedestrian crossing.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - panamaniac - 06-11-2016

So does anyone know why some guy was riding his bike late this morning on Courtland Ave heading toward Victoria Park dressed in a Spiderman costume and with a big Soviet flag fluttering from the back of his bike? Sometimes one wants to know more.....


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - Andy - 06-11-2016

Yeah, I personally know who that was. I think he was just getting in the Euro cup spirit.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - greybird - 06-11-2016

He spent some time biking around the food truck festival too.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - panamaniac - 06-11-2016

My gosh, I just threw that out there but it's true - WRC sees all, knows all, tells all! Smile


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 06-16-2016

Heh, I saw spiderman on the bike too!


So, I've been itching for a while to see a better Iron Horse Trail connection from Glasgow, so I designed one. This is one of the more uncomfortable missing connections, at least that I experience on a regular basis, largely due to the incline.

So, I'm open to thoughts and opinions on the design.

I'm also open to thoughts and suggestions for the actual presentation. I built it in Google Earth which wasn't terrible difficult, but certainly isn't the prettiest, so I'm interested in tips on this too.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1Ax3rJLG4Dd2TWFbXISGmhH66O0o

Also, I wasn't sure what the usual policy was on this message board, I would generally have created a new thread for something like this, but seems like that isn't the right thing to do here.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - clasher - 06-16-2016

I've long thought that could be improved too and the worn path in the dirt suggests many people already do cut the corner off. Hopefully cutting the timmie's turn lane short doesn't cause a ruckus in the morning.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 06-16-2016

(06-16-2016, 08:17 AM)clasher Wrote: I've long thought that could be improved too and the worn path in the dirt suggests many people already do cut the corner off. Hopefully cutting the timmie's turn lane short doesn't cause a ruckus in the morning.

Not sure which turn lane you are referring to?  The changes I propose don't shorten or remove any lanes, just changes a 5+ meter wide lane to a 4 meter lane.


RE: Cycling in Waterloo Region - clasher - 06-16-2016

(06-16-2016, 08:38 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(06-16-2016, 08:17 AM)clasher Wrote: I've long thought that could be improved too and the worn path in the dirt suggests many people already do cut the corner off. Hopefully cutting the timmie's turn lane short doesn't cause a ruckus in the morning.

Not sure which turn lane you are referring to?  The changes I propose don't shorten or remove any lanes, just changes a 5+ meter wide lane to a 4 meter lane.

The right-turn lane on the north side of Glasgow where you have boulevard grass and Bike Merging Warning Markings + Signs seems like it's jutting into the start of the right-turn lane.