07-25-2022, 11:18 PM
(07-25-2022, 08:10 PM)ac3r Wrote: Nevermind the size issues, who would think it would be a wise idea to put a MUT beside an active train line? That's a ridiculous suggestion indeed. Even with a fence, that's an awful suggestion for the placement of a bike lane. Would you want a bike trail right between two activite freight tracks that had freight trains every 10 minutes even if it had a fence? Lol.
Total nonsense. If it’s OK to have a bicycle lane separated from a motor vehicle lane with a 60km/h speed limit by 10cm of paint, then it’s OK to have a bicycle lane separated from an LRT line by a low chain link fence.
And to the other person who was concerned about the space between the 2 LRT tracks: the proposal is not to put a path between the tracks where they are. The idea is an alternate way the LRT could have been taken across the bridge which would have been better than what was built. Very simply, instead of this:
sidewalk, bike lane, 2 motor vehicle lanes, 2 LRT tracks, 2 motor vehicle lanes, bike lane, sidewalk
… you would instead have this:
2 motor vehicle lanes, LRT track, MUT, LRT track, 2 motor vehicle lanes. Based on the width of the existing sidewalks and bike lanes, that would give about 6m of space for the MUT, which would probably make it the widest one in the city. The MUT in the centre would run from Colby Dr. to the spur line. Note that it would have absolutely no conflicts with traffic at all in that space. At either end one would have a signalized crossing to both the north and south sides of Northfield. This means that for somebody who needs to cross Northfield, if they do so by crossing to the centre MUT, then take it to the other end, then finish crossing Northfield, effectively they have no crossings; and if somebody needs to stay on the same side of Northfield then they have two crossings of one direction, or the equivalent of crossing a major street once.
In short, it would be awesome, and none of the objections I have seen are prohibitive.
Next time, I’ll talk about diverging diamond interchanges…