Cycling in Waterloo Region

[plam]

I've been continuing to count cars in the Uptown bike lanes. I think the current status is that (1) occasionally a car doesn't get the memo about where the lane ends (especially near Princess, and somehow often a BMW) and (2) cars sometimes think that using the bike lane to drop off people is just fine. I yell at people about that sometimes. It's this thing where people need to be dropped off 2 steps from their destination.

(1) is annoying and shouldn't happen, but it's not as much of a danger as (2). There's also a pylon on the east side that helps with (1). For (2) the problem is that it's an intermittent danger that is hard to protect against (except by bollards!). Like, it's really hard to enforce "no stopping" as compared to "no parking"; by the time someone comes by (and even if they wanted to enforce), the infraction may no longer exist.

Not to mention, but WRPS is explicit in their refusal to ticket people illegally blocking bike lanes who are "just delivering".

As for (1) it's a bigger issue than you think, because it means the space that was supposed to be a buffer from dooring is gone.  (1) would also have been fixed by curbs.  How often do you see a car parked a foot over a barrier curb.

By (1) I mean exceeding the bike lane after it ends (north/south, closer to the intersection) rather than doing a bad job parking and being inside the lane (east/west). But yes, curbs would help with that as well.