Cycling in Waterloo Region

[westwardloo]

Here's the stretch in question, on Street View. My proposal would be a physical barrier between the outer road lane and the bike lane, even if just at this narrow bit.

This is an unfortunate consequence of over a half century of bad planning in this city/ region focused around the car. We build massive Arterial roads that encourage drivers to drive 70+ km/ hr. Then design our streets and subdivisions in a way that only allows limited access to the arterial roads from neighbourhoods, then build all our critical community infrastructure on the corner of 2 arterial roads. Looking at google maps of that area of town makes me sick. It wasn't build that long ago, but its filled with single family cal-de-sacs and little to no biking infrastructure. There is no access to the school from community to east other then fairway road. This gives them no choices but to either drive their kids to school or have them walk on a sidewalk with no buffer between them and cars driving at killing speeds, or let them ride their bike in the "bike" lane. Its ridiculous that the Region just paints a line in gutter and calls it a bike lane.