Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

@ijmorlan. The roll curb is ostensibly so cyclists can exit the bike lane onto the road safely in case of obstruction--like an illegally parked car.

That’s stupid. There wouldn’t be obstructions if it were a regular curb. Probably.

Also, the lanes are supposed to be segregated, which implies separation, which implies that smoothly sliding from one to the other is not an option. Vehicles on the general traffic lanes won’t be expecting it anyway.

At this point the easiest fix might be those plastic divider flags. Just attach them to the roll curb to clearly delineate the boundary of the vehicular zone.

Finally, I was thinking about the signage that we’re hoping they will install. First, I realized that “No Parking” is not correct; it should be “No Stopping”. Then I realized that even that isn’t really right: “No Stopping” implies that vehicles have business being there, they are just not allowed to stop (other than for other traffic). But vehicles simply have no business at all being in the bicycle lanes for even a microsecond, unless it is to cross them in order to turn on or off of the street. So I actually think they should just use divider flags or whatever those things are called, along with “No Stopping” signs to indicate that vehicles should not stop on King St. itself. On the other hand, they seem to have settled on “No Stopping” for the curb lane LRT segments, which are conceptually exactly the same as the bicycle lanes.