Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I didn’t follow the debate on removing the pilot in Cambridge, but I have been a bit worried that the hacked-together nature of the temporary pilot might poison public opinion against bike lanes. There are places where I feel confident that a permanent installation would provide a turn lane or more clearly delineate who is supposed to be where and would work well; whereas the temporary installation looks messy and under some traffic conditions causes unnecessary bottlenecks.

Still it’s nice to see confirmation that the engineers were wrong to say that we need streets like Erb and Westmount to be four lanes. I think reducing them to two lanes plus appropriate turn lanes and separated bicycle lanes would dramatically improve the city, reduce maintenance costs, and hardly affect motor vehicle traffic at all (except maybe in a hypothetical future where we decide that we actually want everybody to drive everywhere after all and cancel the buses; then the four lanes might actually be needed, although they wouldn’t help without turn lanes anyway).

Under current traffic levels I’m not even seeing much evidence of needing turn lanes except maybe occasionally, although that will change if traffic levels increase again.

I think you are right that the fear in Cambridge was that this would hurt other cycling projects...ironic given that opponents with 100% regularity preface their opposition with "I'm not against bike lanes but"...

But it's disappointing none the less...

I agree wholeheartedly with westwardloo.