(12-23-2017, 07:56 PM)Canard Wrote: Okay, but hang on. It’s fine to claim it was the trail. You can’t automatically assume it still is now that construction is complete. Your assumption that the pavement is a trail is just as harmful as a motorist assuming it’s a road built for them - no different.
Until it’s actually explicitly said somewhere that “yes, this is the trail - feel free to ride your bike here” I absolutely won’t. It’s not really safe - you’re riding parallel to the rails, which is dumb. I just jog over to between the LRT stop and Waterloo Town Square.
East of King it’s clear: there is a sign that clearly indicates that bicycle and pedestrian traffic is expected to share the space with freight trains. Also the City now does snow clearance as they do for the rest of the Laurel trail and Spur Line trail. So that space is definitely a trail, as far as I can tell.
West of King, it’s not clear, and it’s unclear in a way which suggests it was not clear to the designers, who didn’t care enough to check. Personally I do bicycle along the freight tracks because the only hazard is freight trains, which don’t come when I use the trail and would be obvious in plenty of time even if they did come, but I agree that it’s a weird setup. One thing I realized after a while is that the space between the rails should be depressed so that instead of two bicycle-wheel-grabbing flangeways there should be a single depressed space, similar to what was done on some parts of King St. with the LRT track. Also there are “do not enter” signs explicitly telling motorists not to enter. Now I suppose you could argue those apply to bicycles as well, but that’s pretty questionable because there are all sorts of places bicycles are OK and motor vehicles aren’t. Only if it’s clearly a road and the “do not enter” is saying that it is a one-way road going the other way is it clear that it applies to bicycles as well.
I disagree that a bicycle and a motor vehicle assuming something about the status of a route is the same. Everything done in a motor vehicle is more serious than the same action done on a bicycle, whether it’s driving carelessly in a pedestrian area, parking somewhere inappropriate, or using a route that isn’t really intended to be a route. Not to say that bicyclists should get a free pass to do whatever they want, but I just don’t see who is harmed or even inconvenienced by bicycles using the paved section of freight track.