Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

It was likely the wiring underground or possibly other buried infrastructure. It's inconvenient, but I'd hope cyclists have the sense to not drive into the pole to begin with.

More a concern of it being a space impediment when there are also pedestrians or people waiting for a crossing you can no longer get around. To say nothing of the fact that every MUT crossing seems to get the same ped only grade slope to make your wrists suffer.

And it's not just that, the pole is only the most obvious problem in the design. Basically, the crossing is half the width, and all cyclists will want to use the wrong side.

Basically, they have created a situation where there is an incredibly tight turn.

And even if the underground equipment was a problem, it didn't need to be this way. If staff were less obsessed (yes obsessed) with maintaining a massive turn radii from a residential street the crossing could have been moved outward to be more in line with the trail. And then the pole would have been between the ped and cycling crossings.

And in any case, the designs of these trails is bad. It's fine on Homer Watson where there are few to no pedestrians or cyclists, but this is a relatively busy area that's only going to get busier. Pedestrians and cyclists should be separated, but at least pedestrians and cyclists shouldn't be made to cross their paths as they are at each intersection here (given that pedestrians have a natural tenancy to walk on the right side of a pathway). But that's at least a problem with the Ontario crossing standards rather than a problem with our engineers specifically.