07-11-2019, 11:34 AM
So I met with region staff at Willis Way. They pointed out the design challenges there: putting in the crosswalk at the north end of the platform wouldn't work great because the cars will bunch up from Erb and Caroline. My recollection of that conversation is that their predicted car behaviour is that the cars would just block the crosswalk. The PXO at the south end of Willis Way is there for accessibility reasons, but they expect that most able-bodied people would jaywalk midblock on Caroline to get to/leave the station, which is the behaviour that I've observed.
I found that the Region of Waterloo engineers are actually quite realistic with respect to human behaviour on roads; their focus is on reducing the number of people actually getting hit by cars (vs just following the rules).
We also looked at the cars turning west onto Erb from Caroline despite the prohibition ("NO LEFT TURN, BUSES EXCEPTED"). Usually it seems to be cars that are following buses.
They are also continuing to work on signal timing and reducing unnecessary arms-down time.
Not having a split stop would have been better (i.e. two-way traffic on King St) but that was driven by elected officials. Cambridge isn't getting split stops in their design.
I found that the Region of Waterloo engineers are actually quite realistic with respect to human behaviour on roads; their focus is on reducing the number of people actually getting hit by cars (vs just following the rules).
We also looked at the cars turning west onto Erb from Caroline despite the prohibition ("NO LEFT TURN, BUSES EXCEPTED"). Usually it seems to be cars that are following buses.
They are also continuing to work on signal timing and reducing unnecessary arms-down time.
Not having a split stop would have been better (i.e. two-way traffic on King St) but that was driven by elected officials. Cambridge isn't getting split stops in their design.