Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I was thinking about these design changes at Weber while riding my bike to work yesterday, on the Fairway Road Extension:

Posted 80 km/h (so, 90-105 km/h actual) road with tall wall and bike lane in between. Please don't repeat design, @RegionWaterloo #bikeWR pic.twitter.com/HBSInSHT0D

— Iain Hendry (@Canardiain) August 23, 2017

I remember seeing this when it opened and thinking unprintable thoughts about the designers. In this location it is absolutely indisputable that the wall should be between motor and non-motor vehicles, not between bicyclists and pedestrians. Even if bicycles are kept separate from pedestrians, either with a line or even with a curb, that would be OK, but the wall should separate the bicyclists from 18-wheelers. It’s just a total lack of actual thinking. I assume the “designers” are just applying some manual rather than actually engaging their brains and analyzing the situation.

The ironic and shameful thing about that, is one reason the bike lane is between the car lane and the curb is one of driver comfort.  Traffic engineers require curb lanes (and especially lanes with a full vertical obstruction like a wall) to be wider (0.3 meters for a curb, but look at the Weber St. underpass, nearly 1.5 meters for a wall) in order to make drivers "comfortable".  If they just stick a bike lane in there, they can justify a narrower bridge than if they had to put the bike lane with the sidewalk.  

Very sad state of affairs.

If Mr. Hendry feels this way, which I also agree, please ask him to instead come to Regional Council and say so.  Tweeting about it doesn't do nearly as much as a presence at council would.  As I said, I went to Committee, but council apparently didn't find my presentation compelling, although staff missinformation did not help either.