ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

On a somewhat-related note, has anybody else noticed that the trees on the other side of the path in the park are about to be cut down? I guess they’re 10cm or whatever over from where the new line of trees between the pedestrian and cycling paths will be so they have to come out.

Creative planning could have kept both rows of trees. Just pave the existing path as the bicycle path and create a second path parallel to the existing path, using the existing trees to guide placement of the new path.

To be fair, this is not related to LRT, it's related to the park trails, which is strictly a city project.

That being said, I don't believe keeping the trees would have been possible, never minding the impact on trees of paving right up to them, there isn't enough room for the pedestrian trail between the trees and some of the buildings inside the fencing.  Yes, those buildings could have been moved, but that's far more expensive that simply moving a fence a few feet.

Yes, this really belongs in a different thread. But I don’t really understand what you’re saying, in light of what I recall from the plan. My recollection is that the plan calls for a bicycle trail immediately next to the ION fence, then a line of trees, then a pedestrian path, with each path being 4m in width. OK, maybe there isn’t room between the fence and the existing line of trees for a 4m path, but clearly there is room for, say, a 3.5m path, because there is one there now. So just pave that. Then pave a pedestrian path on the other side of the existing line of trees.

I’m not sure exactly what is planned for the other items in the way of the pedestrian path, but it seems pretty clear that things will be moving, at least if I’m reading the plans at all correctly.

On of the things I’ve noticed about planners is they’re incredibly bad at saying “X is ideal, but 0.9X is fine if that is what is existing or convenient to fit into existing conditions”. This goes for everything from lane widths to wheelchair ramp inclines, and it is very often the case that by pushing a limit just a little, many possibilities are opened up to make things better overall even if the specific aspect being pushed is in some theoretical sense not as good as it “should” be. Take a wheelchair ramp example. Say that ramps should be 1/20 slope (can’t remember right now). But in *this* location, making it 1/19 allows eliminating a switchback. Worth doing? Very likely. Just a tiny bit steeper than what is ideal, but better in other ways. Same concept in the park — the existing path is great, partly because of the trees. So don’t destroy all the existing trees just because they aren’t in *exactly* the right place.