Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

And before the Region, CN presumably. I believe the paving bricks dated from an early ’90s renovation.

Do you know for sure the official status now? There is an official traffic sign at the east end forbidding motor vehicle traffic and advising bicycles/pedestrians to be careful because it is shared with trains.

Regional staff have claimed the official status, I have no personally pulled the land deeds lol, but I generally trust them.

And yes, the city also put up the sign.  Frankly, it seems like one of these "stop asking questions lest we be forced to do something about it" situations.

That being said, I think it would be not too hard to fix, it would only take about 15 parking spaces in the parkade and some small renovations to redirect the path out through the parkade and avoid the entire alley...it should be trivial to work across the road from that point--its safer and less congested there anyway.

There is already a path connecting Regina to King next to the parkade. I guess taking some extra space to widen would be helpful. But why would anybody use that when the direct route is available? The only real problem is the flangeways; the fact that the space is shared with trains simply isn’t a problem, safety or otherwise (well, except administratively!).

More fundamentally, we have a regulatory framework which isn’t capable of officially taking into account local conditions and making appropriate accommodations, or at least not without excessive expense. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours’ total time by various people to request, investigate, and approve a request to consider that area to be shared right-of-way between trains and multi-use trail, subject to a low maximum speed for the trains and reconsideration in the event train traffic increases significantly.

It’s a good thing trains already exist. If they were invented now I doubt level crossings would even be allowed, anywhere, and trains would end up being infeasible to install almost everywhere.