Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Do we have any metrics on the number of bike lanes, or connectivity, or anything like that?

My perception is that while the trail network has not been substantially extended (though some parts have been improved), the amount of MUTs and dedicated on-street bicycle lanes has increased substantially over the past 2-3 years, even if we ignore the temporary "COVID lanes". It's surely still far from a comprehensive network, but do we have some data on what gains are being made?

I'd say this is not true, there have been a number of projects, (some, planned earlier and delayed).

The Homer-Watson MUT is brand new, as well as the one on Courtland Ave under the higheway is now official, Ottawa's lanes/MUTs have been extended east, the one on Lexington is a few years old now, maybe 4 years...there are new bike lanes on Stirling, Krug, and planned for Mill. I am probably missing others...those are just off the top of my head.

Plus the pilot project on Queens and Belmont was a significant piece of infrastructure....the Region's pilot upgraded the existing lanes on Columbia and University, plus added new ones on King and Albert.

I do think the region is making progress, although the main obstacles continue to be connectedness of the grid, e.g., the Homer-Watson MUT is hard to get too...and also a willingness to prioritize actual infra in constrained areas (Dundas is being rebuilt with mediocre painted bike lanes and the same engineers are fighting to force Lexington to painted bike lanes, by pitting cyclists against peds instead of against road space). I think both of these come back to the root issue at the region, which is that the engineers (backed by some of council) see their job as building roads for cars, anything else is a nice to have that isn't a priority and doesn't provide any economic benefit.

I don't think we'll make meaningful city wide progress beyond specific projects that are easy (like Homer-Watson) until the region changes their priorities...and I don't mean in a regional planning doc, which already claims to prioritize these things, but which is not in any meaningfulway actually guiding decision making.

I think we actually need to go further, the regional transportation planners need to decide to no longer prioritize growth in VMT....every single long term planning document right now assumes climate failure as a precondition of every planning decision we are making. Every single policy document assumes VMT will continue to grow at the current rate....