07-11-2019, 01:31 PM
(07-11-2019, 11:34 AM)plam Wrote: 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.
I don't see how cars bunching up from Erb and Caroline is a problem, the north end of Willis Way stations is 228m from Erb/Caroline. That's space for a lot of cars to be stopped. Unless the concern is about blocking Father David Bauer, but that still has room for 71m of stopped cars. They could also add signage at Father David Bauer about not blocking the intersection.
As for drivers ignoring the bus-only left turn, I feel like signals could do a lot for that. The signals facing drivers northbound on Caroline should just always be a red light, with a white bar for buses and green arrow for right turns. If a car attempts to make a left they'll just never get a green light, and eventually they'll learn that attempting to turn there is futile (as most won't be willing to blatantly run a red).