Quote:The National Active Transportation Fund, $400 million to be spent over five years, will nearly quadruple the amount of money Canada spent over the last five years building and upgrading bike paths, pedestrian walkways and bridges, and nature trails.

(03-13-2021, 08:17 AM)jamincan Wrote: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/feds-unveil-first-ever-dedicated-fund-for-active-transportation-1.5344392

Quote:The National Active Transportation Fund, $400 million to be spent over five years, will nearly quadruple the amount of money Canada spent over the last five years building and upgrading bike paths, pedestrian walkways and bridges, and nature trails.

This is pretty big news and has me thinking how Waterloo Region could best tap into it.

I'd like to see some thought go into adding more pedestrian/cycling overpasses of the expressways and Grand River.

(03-13-2021, 12:47 PM)dtkvictim Wrote: The downtown cycling grid documents also say "If external grant funding can be secured, construction can be completed in one year. If funded solely through the city’s existing capital funding for cycling, the project will be constructed over two to three years.", so I wonder if they will pursue funding for that purpose.

(03-13-2021, 02:07 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:

(03-13-2021, 12:47 PM)dtkvictim Wrote: The downtown cycling grid documents also say "If external grant funding can be secured, construction can be completed in one year. If funded solely through the city’s existing capital funding for cycling, the project will be constructed over two to three years.", so I wonder if they will pursue funding for that purpose.

Are we referring to the downtown grid?

That was in reference to COVID funding I think, it was decided that the city would fund the grid itself, and that COVID funding would go to projects dispersed across the city, mostly trail paving--they're good projects, but they aren't really co-ordinated in the same way the downtown grid is.

(03-13-2021, 06:29 PM)dtkvictim Wrote:

(03-13-2021, 02:07 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Are we referring to the downtown grid?

That was in reference to COVID funding I think, it was decided that the city would fund the grid itself, and that COVID funding would go to projects dispersed across the city, mostly trail paving--they're good projects, but they aren't really co-ordinated in the same way the downtown grid is.

Yes.

I didn't realize a decision had been made, I assumed that "extra funding" option would remain open in case external funding became available (such as possibly through this active transport fund). But anyways, I'm just impatient to see it get done and be able to make use of it, and I don't know if I see myself in DTK in 3 years time. Plus I'd like to see us much further ahead on cycling infrastructure in three years, not just wrapping up the "grid".

(03-17-2021, 07:53 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: ATAC got a sneak peak at the COVID bike lane pilot survey results:

Something that comes as absolutely no surprise is that Geoff Lorentz is upset about the survey. No substantive objections, he's just upset.

Quote:Regional Councillor Geoff Lorentz did express dissatisfaction with both the amount of responses gathered by the survey, as well as the questions being asked of respondents. Lorentz noted that, at no point, were respondents asked for their perspective on whether or not the pilot project was worth nearly half a million dollars, as he said the way in which the region had rolled out the project was ‘bass-ackward’.

“We do these online surveys, and we get such a poor turnout – even for budget, we get maybe 1,000 people or 1,500 people making a comment out of 630,000 residents that live in the region.” Said Lorentz. “I hope we aren’t extrapolating this and saying that the 738 people that participated (…) creates an extrapolation where we say, really it’s 70,000 or 80,000.”

“I understand this stuff looks pretty, and it may make some sense to somebody – but I certainly hope that the takeaway is not that this has been a great success and we’re going to keep doing this thing.”

(03-17-2021, 08:06 AM)jamincan Wrote:

(03-17-2021, 07:53 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: ATAC got a sneak peak at the COVID bike lane pilot survey results:

Something that comes as absolutely no surprise is that Geoff Lorentz is upset about the survey. No substantive objections, he's just upset.

I don't think that's a fair characterization:

Quote:Regional Councillor Geoff Lorentz did express dissatisfaction with both the amount of responses gathered by the survey, as well as the questions being asked of respondents. Lorentz noted that, at no point, were respondents asked for their perspective on whether or not the pilot project was worth nearly half a million dollars, as he said the way in which the region had rolled out the project was ‘bass-ackward’.

“We do these online surveys, and we get such a poor turnout – even for budget, we get maybe 1,000 people or 1,500 people making a comment out of 630,000 residents that live in the region.” Said Lorentz. “I hope we aren’t extrapolating this and saying that the 738 people that participated (…) creates an extrapolation where we say, really it’s 70,000 or 80,000.”

“I understand this stuff looks pretty, and it may make some sense to somebody – but I certainly hope that the takeaway is not that this has been a great success and we’re going to keep doing this thing.”