Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

In related news, John Gazzola is being ratioed into oblivion for a bizarre out of place jab at Melissa Bowman's entirely positive and entirely inoffensive tweet.

If he’s going to make comments like that, he should just move to the USA. I think he’d be more comfortable there.

I’m referring specifically to talking about the “silent majority”. It sounds like the kind of thing somebody would say in between voting for the current President.

Re: that intersection, I wonder if it would work to re-route West Ave. to run parallel to the trail and end at Victoria, with Strange St. simply ending at Victoria instead of continuing through to West Ave. as it does now. Do we really need Park/Strange/West as a semi-thoroughfare? If this were done the trail would cross at the intersection of Victoria and West which presumably would have a traffic light. Alternately the right turn from Victoria onto West could be re-routed to stay to the west/south of the trail, which would remove some traffic from conflicting with the trail entirely (I don’t know how much). The right turn off of Victoria would be fairly sharp, which is good; I’d be concerned the turn onto the existing part of West might be too broad and encourage excessive speed.

Or there could just be a traffic light at the trail, or even just a good high-quality pedestrian refuge.

Frankly, Gazzola is virtually a caricature of bad policy making (yet somehow voted for the sidewalk clearing pilot) and bad rhetoric, as a result, I see him as less harmful to the cause of good city building than certain others on council who I believe carry an air of legitimacy in their regressive policy making, and as a result likely carry more sway with others...I.e., he's loud and obnoxious but less effective as a result...at the end of the day, fun to complain about, but not the top threat to a better city.

I should point out that his views are not necessarily extreme, or unusual, and it is not his views which make him less effective in my mind, but his attitude and lack of charisma. Generally, I don't think the "extremeness" of someones views matter as much as savvyness as a leader and personal charisma...we've seen effective far right and far left leaders succeed. Ultimately people--whether the public or those on council---do not seem overly swayed by facts and reason.

As for the intersection, yeah, there's about a half dozen ways to fix it...the obstacle is not the availability of a good solution, or even dollars to implement one (there is budget for this right now...hell, there was budget for it last year)...it's willingness of regional staff to prioritize ANYTHING over the convenience of motorists, and the willingness of council to allow them to get away with this attitude.