+- Waterloo Region Connected (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com)
+-- Forum: Waterloo Region Works (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=14)
+--- Forum: Transportation and Infrastructure (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=25)
+--- Thread: Walking in Waterloo Region (/showthread.php?tid=189)
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - ijmorlan - 12-09-2020
(12-09-2020, 10:26 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Honestly, I don't really understand how our annexations work. I know London ON annexed many of it's neighbours (you'll still find people who declare they live in "Byron"...and that is fully enclosed in the city now). Where as in other countries (maybe other provinces) you have cities which basically starve because people live around the perifery, benefit from the services of the city, but don't pay towards those services. But I cannot imagine it is ever popular.
I don’t either, but I think it has changed.
In the past I think cities could annex adjacent or nearby areas of townships on their own initiative; I’ve heard of townships fighting this, although I know even less about the rules for this. I don’t know what would happen if two nearby cities each tried to annex the same land simultaneously; or whether a city could annex another city or part thereof. My understanding is that now the words “city”, “town”, etc. don’t have any actual meaning — any municipality can be named using any of those words but maybe at one time they really were different.
I get the impression that any changes now have to go through the provincial government, and that in practice most changes are imposed by the provincial government on the various municipalities.
I have seen maps of some US cities where little bits of land are annexed, or not, one at a time as they are developed, so that the city border consists of dozens of little bits, with dozens of enclaves and exclaves. I don’t know if they’re still like that or how common it is/was — the one I’m thinking of is a map from the 1950s.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 12-09-2020
(12-09-2020, 02:13 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(12-09-2020, 10:26 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Honestly, I don't really understand how our annexations work. I know London ON annexed many of it's neighbours (you'll still find people who declare they live in "Byron"...and that is fully enclosed in the city now). Where as in other countries (maybe other provinces) you have cities which basically starve because people live around the perifery, benefit from the services of the city, but don't pay towards those services. But I cannot imagine it is ever popular.
I don’t either, but I think it has changed.
In the past I think cities could annex adjacent or nearby areas of townships on their own initiative; I’ve heard of townships fighting this, although I know even less about the rules for this. I don’t know what would happen if two nearby cities each tried to annex the same land simultaneously; or whether a city could annex another city or part thereof. My understanding is that now the words “city”, “town”, etc. don’t have any actual meaning — any municipality can be named using any of those words but maybe at one time they really were different.
I get the impression that any changes now have to go through the provincial government, and that in practice most changes are imposed by the provincial government on the various municipalities.
I have seen maps of some US cities where little bits of land are annexed, or not, one at a time as they are developed, so that the city border consists of dozens of little bits, with dozens of enclaves and exclaves. I don’t know if they’re still like that or how common it is/was — the one I’m thinking of is a map from the 1950s.
You don't even have to go to the US to see it. Montreal has a number of enclaves...apparently there is one in Victoria BC as well.
Ultimately, it seems like our cities in Ontario are fairly free from this type of thing, but they more have the opposite problem, where a municipality includes an enormous land area that is mostly unrelated (looking at you Ottawa and Hamilton), and where culturally distinct areas with different needs are amalgamated together (looking at you, almost every other city).
Local government is a complex beast.
In some ways this conversation is a wide diversion now. But in others, it's extremely on point, these different jurisdictions cause breaks in transportation networks. Sure, we have a regional municpality here, but a lot of places don't. Hell, London UK deals with this, where different boroughs (I think they're called boroughs) will refuse to implement say bike lanes...so there are breaks. Ultimately, there's always a trade off between local context and unified vision. What is a shame is that safe roads for everyone is not unversal. Frankly, the fact that it isn't, kind of makes me feel that "local context" is 90% bullshit, but again, this is why I am not a politician.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - jamincan - 12-09-2020
I think there might be a difference being considered a city, at least, I think there's a reason that Oakville is a still a town that isn't just sentimentality.
The last time I'm aware an annexation occurred in Ontario was about 10 years ago when Barrie annexed part of Innisfil. I'm not entirely sure what the process was, but I know it was not with Innisfil's cooperation.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - ijmorlan - 12-09-2020
(12-09-2020, 02:47 PM)jamincan Wrote: I think there might be a difference being considered a city, at least, I think there's a reason that Oakville is a still a town that isn't just sentimentality.
My understanding is that the City of Markham (formerly the Town of Markham) renamed itself essentially because it was getting bigger and people already thought of it as a city. That being said, I am not an expert and other cases could be different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham,_Ontario#cite_note-city-7
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - ijmorlan - 12-09-2020
(12-09-2020, 02:42 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: In some ways this conversation is a wide diversion now. But in others, it's extremely on point, these different jurisdictions cause breaks in transportation networks. Sure, we have a regional municpality here, but a lot of places don't. Hell, London UK deals with this, where different boroughs (I think they're called boroughs) will refuse to implement say bike lanes...so there are breaks. Ultimately, there's always a trade off between local context and unified vision. What is a shame is that safe roads for everyone is not unversal. Frankly, the fact that it isn't, kind of makes me feel that "local context" is 90% bullshit, but again, this is why I am not a politician.
“Local context” is an interesting phrase. In principle, I think there is lots of local context, a lack of recognition of which is part of what is wrong with modern zoning; but in practice I would expect it to be used mostly to keep sidewalks and bicycle paths, not to mention affordable housing, away from some parts of town.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - plam - 12-09-2020
(12-09-2020, 02:42 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: You don't even have to go to the US to see it. Montreal has a number of enclaves...apparently there is one in Victoria BC as well.
The local context for Montreal is that there used to be a bunch of cities (plus the Montreal Urban Community which wasn't that powerful) and then some Quebec government decided to do the thing that provincial governments do and merge them. People weren't happy and a subsequent government had demerger votes so that boroughs could become cities again, but the bar was quite high.
(OK, so even before the mergers the city of Montreal was not contiguous, there were mergers from the early part of the 20th century also. An interesting one is in the east end, the Cité de Maisonneuve a bit east of the present-day Olympic Stadium was ambitious and built stuff and then ran out of money and got merged with Montreal. There's a short bit of the history at the end of this page, in French: http://patrimoine.ville.montreal.qc.ca/patri_municipal/fiche_bat.php?id_bat=0145-67-3765-01)
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - BruceAshe - 12-18-2020
Who would be responsible for the traffic lights (pedestrian crossing to be exact) at Weber St E/Cedar St? The region? The timing on that crossing light has been changed over the last couple of weeks and as a result I'm getting worried that a child is going to get hurt while crossing there. Many kids need to cross Weber on the way to or from Suddaby and it has become impossible for the youngest to be able to cross in the time given. Often parents and children are still in the crosswalk when the countdown has ended, even if they were able to start crossing right at the beginning of the light.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - taylortbb - 12-18-2020
(12-18-2020, 10:27 AM)BruceAshe Wrote: Who would be responsible for the traffic lights (pedestrian crossing to be exact) at Weber St E/Cedar St? The region?
The region installs and maintains all traffic lights, even if they're on city streets. Though on city streets they often defer to the input of the cities.
Weber is regional while Cedar is city, so I'd start with the region but it may involve both of them.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - KevinL - 12-18-2020
Yeah, if either of the roads is regional it's controlled by the region.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - plam - 12-29-2020
Extreme enforcement of pedestrian right of way:
https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1343940550488162306?s=19
As I noted in a reply, Atlantic Canada is different somehow.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 12-29-2020
(12-29-2020, 03:00 PM)plam Wrote: Extreme enforcement of pedestrian right of way:
https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1343940550488162306?s=19
As I noted in a reply, Atlantic Canada is different somehow.
This is an interesting anecdote, and while it's probably true that I have overstated the ineffectiveness of enforcement, it is equally important to consider policy as a whole.
I.e., how easy it is to compromise or corrupt, how easy is it to reverse.
Enforcement is a bad policy because:
a) it is hard to actually implement for real. If we actually wanted enforcement, we could do it for many things, we could buy traffic cameras, other automated enforcement systems, use technology to help officers be more efficient, etc.
But we don't, because politicians don't want to, enforcement is a useful thing to pretend to do, but it's not actually something we're willing to invest in. Because
b) It would be unpopular, and very inexpensive to reverse. People get angry when they get a ticket, then they call their elected leader, and instead of asking, "well did you park illegally, yes, then why are you complaining", that elected leader is more likely to push against or put to reverse enforcement efforts. Since there is very little investment and no hard infrastructure (even traffic cameras are made to be moved--not specifically so they can be easily removed, but it is the effect) is used, therefore the cost to roll back enforcement is near zero. Of course, not everyone will be calling their elected official which leads to...
c) It's easy to corrupt, elected officials don't have to stop enforcement entirely, only on their loudest constitutents...which leads to all sorts of equity issues.
So while, in theory, and even in practice in some places enforcement can have an effect on people's behaviour, I will almost never advocate for it as a public policy or solution to all but the most universally reveiled behaviour (like drunk driving) because I don't believe such a policy will be effective in our political and social structures.
Infrastructure on the other hand can be more egalitarian (yes, there is anti-homeless infra, and yes infra investments can easily be racist, but a narrowed roadway slows all cars to ... borrow a phrase) and it is generally expensive to reverse, a government must pay money to take it out, making removing it unpopular (although, not impossible, and when it comes to paint--well paint isn't infrastructure). But of course, there are also reasons why implementing infrastructure is a very hard thing to do as well.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - Bytor - 04-09-2021
I came across this video on multistage crossings on youtube recently, and while it isn't explicitly about pedestrian islands, it is relevant to the overarching discussion on how hostile we in North America make things to pedestrians and cyclists when they need to cross teh path of car traffic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSnSeyG74fw
The talk about multi-phase signal patterns in the Netherlands is quite illuminating as nothing like that ever gets implemented here. All we got is "everybody goes the one way, then everybody goes the other way", with maybe advanced greens for vehicles because not only is it general practice is to try and avoid multi-stage crossings, but because the traffic engineers are so locked into that patter than they never even look for non-conflicting segments that could be allowed to go, both for pedestrians or vehicles.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - ijmorlan - 04-09-2021
(04-09-2021, 04:39 PM)Bytor Wrote: I came across this video on multistage crossings on youtube recently, and while it isn't explicitly about pedestrian islands, it is relevant to the overarching discussion on how hostile we in North America make things to pedestrians and cyclists when they need to cross teh path of car traffic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSnSeyG74fw
Very cool. I felt like I was actually being shown the outcome of real expertise. Also I have to admit I have thought of 2-stage crossings as being bad for pedestrians; while I still think that is probably true of most North American implementations, it’s clear the problem isn’t with the 2-stage concept itself.
I do have to say that some of the signals on King St. in the LRT segment are actually pretty good. I’ve sometimes stopped for a red light which existed in order to let somebody turn left across my path, but found that by the time I had stopped the light was already turning yellow.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - catarctica - 04-09-2021
My number one wish list for KW is raised pedestrian crossing. There’s one in Wilfrid Laurier University but sadly not a lot more.
RE: Walking in Waterloo Region - danbrotherston - 04-09-2021
(04-09-2021, 06:07 PM)catarctica Wrote: My number one wish list for KW is raised pedestrian crossing. There’s one in Wilfrid Laurier University but sadly not a lot more.
There are a couple in town, their implementations are generally poor.
For example there is a new one on Patricia:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4417928,-80.5059278,3a,75y,321.56h,66.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s5pV6bG_h84TpRIMb8ugTzA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
That was constructed in the last 2 years.
There are also older ones like this one on Laurentian (significantly better than the one on Patricia, but still with significant issues):
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4166509,-80.493735,3a,75y,7.63h,87.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stakFaJM_SUHdGAJU6e_GgQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
These are for midblock trail crossings, I cannot think of an intersection raised crossing, beyond extremely poorly designed T intersection + driveways that exist in a few places.
The biggest problem with these, is that while the raised crossing does slow traffic on Patricia, the choice to still drop the curb, then raise the crossing means that trail users experience a bump an order of magnitude more severe than drivers. While this alone poses danger as it can cause trail users to fall, the bigger problem is it focuses the attention of trail users away from the road, you must focus on just staying up when bouncing up and down the big bump.
I had a discussion with the Kitchener engineers on this one, the reason they do this is drainage. I took some time, evaluated the crossing, then gave that my opinion is that whatever the extra cost to fix the drainage so that the crossing can be done right is worth it, because the current design is incredibly problematic.
The second biggest problem is the fact that there is a raised crossing on Patricia which sees almost no traffic, but there is NOT one on West which sees significant and much faster traffic. The reason being, West has too much traffic to put a raised crossing. But that is the OPPOSITE justification, West has a lot of traffic so it NEEDS a raised crossing, but Patricia has little so it is probably fine without. This kind of backwards logic has to be dealt with. Worse, West has TWO major trail crossings BOTH of which have had their designs corrupted by the demands of vehicles...it is really infuriating every time I think about it.