Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

I read a post on Reddit where someone suggested a better idea than an island would be a tunnel under the road. It would be safer and keep the flow of foot/bike traffic on the trail moving at a constant pace. They're pretty common in Europe, so I don't see why we couldn't build the same here, except for the fact the city would likely say it costs too much money.

Where are the sewer lines at that point?

The answer to that question pretty much determines whether tunnelling would be excessively expensive or absurdly expensive.

That’s not to say that tunnels can’t be appropriate in some places, but where there is no existing grade change it’s a lot of work to put one in, and needs to extend over a long distance for approach ramps. Then you get concerns about hemmed-in spaces.

On the other hand, maybe the trick is to spend lots of money on bicycle infrastructure, rather than little bits. It works for the road network…instead of begging for minimal funding we just go ahead and spend millions on every project, adding unnecessary lanes just because.