Cycling in Waterloo Region

[tomh009]

I don't think most people realise how cheaply separated bike lanes can be added. I mean, it's always cheaper to do it at the same time at th ebeginning, but if all your doing is teh bike infrastructure later, it's not like you need to redo as deep as a vehicle lane because wear and tear will be orders of magnitude less.

I don’t think people realize how freakishly expensive road infrastructure is. The amounts we quibble over spending on paving bicycle routes are rounding errors in the discussion over widening roads and building expressways.

The current 401 widening project cost is $640M for 18 km. Some lanes already exist while others are new, and the logistics are a bit ugly. But it's somewhere on the order of $3M per lane-km. Or $36M for a km of 12-lane highway. Or $3000 per metre of driving lane.