Cycling in Waterloo Region

[clasher]

So, I biked the whole 25 km to my office and back on Wednesday.  I live in Kitchener, and work in Cambridge, on the far East side in the Lovell Industrial Park.

The route I planned took a lot of finagling - I'm quite familiar with all the various backroads to get to and from the office, to avoid 401 congestion during construction.  There were only a couple of spots I couldn't figure out how to find "less scary" roads.  And they were... terrifying.  I don't know if I'll try this again until I can have a real re-think on this.  I can't quite figure out how to totally avoid both Fountain and Maple Grove.  Those were the only spots I felt like... "I'm going to die".  Here's roughly what I did:

https://goo.gl/maps/U361yQGciEv

I really, really wish we had some kind of paved MUT that went all the way from Kitchener to Cambridge, just like the Spur Line Trail from Kitchener to Waterloo.  Once can always dream...

That's basically the way I take when I leave downtown to head over to Guelph or southeast of Cambridge. I like Krug instead of Frederick but they've started working on the road; it wasn't closed when I was through there yesterday but that might change. When I cross Fairway I take a right on Riverbank even though it's a bit more distance it's very quiet and quite scenic IMO. On the return trip one has to walk the bike across the road because of the median but I've never found the traffic bad enough to make it difficult. Rush hour along Middle Block sure has changed in the last 10 years since I started riding that road. I just rode townline over the 401 on the weekend and I remembered how much it sucks too! I usually take the extra distance and go down concession 2 and back along Ellis ave.

Here is a completely different take but it's almost 8km more so it might not be exactly what you're looking for but it avoids crossing the 401 with cars, it avoid crossing highway 8 and it uses a lot of trails and the path along can-amera is pretty nice riding and the bike lanes aren't terrible but it's been a long while since I've been down there in rush hour so I dunno if traffic is bad or worse. On this route I take the Iron Horse to get to the Rockway area... it's got some mean hills on the return trip but I like hills and will take them over traffic any day of the week.