Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I drove over the new IHT raised crossing at Glasgow St, and it's a much more typical speed bump unlike what they put in on Mill St.

Yet to bike over it, but hopefully it's a smooth trail transition unlike the nonsense at Henry Sturm and Patricia Ave.

I know that their goal is to build proper raised crossings that are a real speed bump for cars and smooth for cyclists. Staff agreed with me finally that what they did at Patricia was worse than nothing for cyclists.

For Mill, I was told that was a contractor error and it was supposed to be corrected, but it seems that it has not happened and I assume will not happen. Not surprising sadly.

I don't understand these bags at all. They left them on for both Ontario and Gaukel, when both are to be permanently closed for cars (well, Ontario only in one direction). At best they are just confusing ... why not simply remove them?

I emailed Darren Kropf about the Ontario St lights, and he said he has forwarded it to the Region for an update, as the lights are their responsibility. He said "signal upgrades" so presumably the old lights are supposed to come out, and a new bicycle light should go in? I guess bureaucracy doesn't provide an option for using the existing lights in the meantime...

I assume something similar is happening at Gaukel, since the street hasn't been permanently reconstructed. It's still "temporarily" closed.

I think the traffic signal engineers at the region are some of the most obtuse people about their role. We had the department lead come speak to ATAC...it was like trying to talk to a brick wall. They insist they consider pedestrians in their planning, and even when we asked "this signal doesn't seem to" they just repeat the same answer. They ignored all inquiry about bagging the ped signal at King/Moore that protects pedestrians from vehicles that might drive through the retaining wall.

So it is of zero surprise that they aren't making this a priority. They simply don't care, or are in capable of understand why this matters.

This is the problem with North America...even if we look at just one of our major crises--broken transportation--it itself is composed of hundreds of self-reinforcing problems. There is no silver bullet because we're facing off against hundreds of opponents in every department.