Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I'm surprised they did not put metal bars around the ends like a lot of other crossings have. They don't exactly provide protection, but they make the island a lot more visible to drivers.

I don't know the purpose of the bars, but given they are painted black, I don't believe they are intended to improve visibility, if drivers do not see the yellow retro-reflective warning signs (which they don't a great deal of the time) they aren't likely to see painted black railings.  I believe the railings are there for some purpose for peds (often this is mixed with the truly terrible offset crossing designs), but I'm not sure of the specific intention, but in any case, they no longer use those designs with new crossings.

That is quite a silly alignment...

With so many people driving over the bollards or right in the cycling lanes (someone posted a video of this on Reddit very recently), I wonder if we could use things like flower/plant boxes to divide the road. They'd add some level of safety as they're solid objects and visible and they would beautify the area they're in. It certainly beats curbs and bollards that get destroyed from people and snowplows.

I would never object to more greenery in the city, but I don't think these are the best way to do that. All though in addition to other measures it would be fine.

It's funny you suggest that though, because I would just looking at the UT cycling thread and they were posting about how the planters seem to get the same treatment as other barriers:


Source: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/cy...st-1589711

Yeah, that alignment....pretty crazy...I believe it's intended to make the crossing closer to 90 degrees, but it makes it much more awkward for trail users, and really, provides very limited benefit, in fact, crossing away from 90 would effectively create more width on the island (or it would if it was longer).

Out of curiosity, is your objection to planter barriers based on the implementation or something else?

The picture shows a pretty poor implementation (I mean, for one, it's missing the green), but on the plus sides the planters are wide, much wider than a curb and bollard, and they are also a fairly large vertical obstruction, it presents the driver with a much more solid looking barrier than a bollard or god forbid an idiotic roll curb. And because it is a vertical obstruction, it may also lower speeds more than a curb in the same place would.