Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

My hope is that we've built enough infrastructure now that the city has largely established a preferred design, and that the back-and-forth for public consultation largely disappears for projects that are straight-forward. For example, there are new separated bike lanes planned for East Ave between Frederick and Krug next year to replace the current painted lanes, and the full designs are posted on EngageKitchener, but there was no explicit community input sessions for this reconstruction. They have made it possible for people to reach out about the project, but they really aren't asking for input - the design has been chosen and the work is getting done. It's just outside the bounds of the downtown grid (the neighbourhood bikeway on Chapel is part of the grid, which will connect with the East Ave lanes), so wouldn't have been involved in that planning process.

I am not sure what criteria they use to decide when a public consultation is needed.

In the East Ave. case there is already some right of way and buffer space that can add protection without moving any painted lines (that was an...intense...public consultation where those lanes were discussed). I suspect that a public consultation would still be required any time lanes are reconfigured.

Actually I just took a review of the EngageKitchener site, it is...interesting. I didn't realise it's a full reconstruction. I suspect they're using "virtual consultation" here, I'm sure the homeowners got flyers about it, and that is meeting their requirements (real PICs are expensive...lots of staff overtime).

The scope of work is pretty extensive....much more than I thought, a complete rebuild with protected bike lanes is pretty good, and they're....not terrible. 1.3 meters is too narrow, but I'll forgive it for protected lanes, because honestly that's worth way way more. They do a great job of transitioning the bike infra at Chapel. The turn radii and lanes are still too big but at least they narrow the road at the intersection. The engineers still have no idea what to do about curbs. But the biggest issue I have with it is that it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't integrate well with Krug, which has bike lanes to go under the highway (Krug is already rebuilt so that ship has sailed probably). And they aren't making any changes from Krug to the Aud, and the bike lanes disappear for no good reason there.

I'm guessing there were cost limitations preventing that, and they wanted to make connections from Chapel to Krug and Frederick, which is fair.

Still, it's rather interesting that there was no publicity about this.



I also see they're rebuilding a bunch of other streets as well this year. Lawrence is interesting because I used to ride it daily to take my daughter to daycare. It's ironic they talk about climate management aspects of the project (adding bigger storm drains) but don't make any meaningful changes, like for example narrowing the excessive 8 meter width, or providing any kind of bike connection between the trail behind the plazas, the plazas themselves, and the trail off Highland through lakeside park--which is the most important connection, and also the most dangerous, most badly designed section of the road--which is not to say the rest of the road is safe...I always rode on the sidewalk with my daughter. (This one is probably worth emailing about because there's no excuse for not fixing a trail connection during a full reconstruction).

Wilson Ave is also getting reconstructed, which is interesting, I don't recall it being in that bad of condition. That one is looking to be extremely well designed. The vehicle lanes are still too wide (way too wide in some places), and the bike lanes still too narrow, but other than that, the doc looks like it has raised crossings of strongly narrowed intersections, with parking in bays instead of widening the road (beyond the already too wide travel lanes). It really is a masterclass in the best designs that NA can produce.

What is interesting is that not all the designs are the same...there are still pretty big differences between the three projects I looked at, but certainly an enormous improvement from the past couple years before I left.

Edit: I think a lot of this is driven by the complete streets guide. These kind of documents are incredibly important. It's also funny to hear "the roadway width will be reduced from 9 meters to 7 in line with complete streets guidelines" that's great, but it should be even narrower. In the Netherlands, collectors are often only 5-5.5 meters wide. But even in Canada, the TAC standards they're basing this on permit a 6.3 meters wide road to carry two traffic lanes, and the region will use 3 meter lanes when they want to cram more in (see Westmount Rd.). Still, it's a big step forward.