I have to agree with jeffster, this region does not really have bad traffic, like, ever. I have studied and have access to vast amounts of traffic data for this region since we use it in my field of work, so I have a pretty good idea of what traffic is like in the region/cities. Anytime we work on a project, we study traffic.
Very, very, very rarely do the roads ever get backed up into gridlock here. Some reasons why this is the case is that a) we unfortunately developed into a very car centric region, so we have a lot of roads, but most of these were designed fairly well to move vehicles, despite what people think; b) we have a city that did not really have a typical Anglo-American grid road layout and our streets are more similar to Continental European cities, meaning we have roads that snake in all sorts of directions which results in fairly good traffic flow and alternative options for people to take to their destinations; c) we constructed nearly 20 kilometers of freeway (Constoga Expressway) which allows traffic to easily flow through this city, with lots of good arterial roads connecting to them, to different parts of the city and to other highways that flow in and out of the region. Despite Waterloo Region being roughly 30 kilometers by 15 kilometers at its greatest sizes, you can drive across this entire region by car in 30 minutes (using Constoga Mall in north Waterloo to Gatehouse Drive in south Cambridge as an example). Try going 30 kilometers in the GTA by vehicle...it'll take you much, much longer.
When is the last time you got stuck in a traffic jam for 20+ minutes (excluding when there are accidents/extreme weather)? The only places there is gridlocked traffic on a regular basis is on the highways - Highway 8 being a good example, particularly where it merges into the Conestoga Expressway/Highway 7 and on rare occasions, near the exits near Northfield, because those have unfortunately awkward designs that are hard to rectify now. Google putting some red lines on Google Maps is not always that accurate. All Google Maps does is spy on people who willingly leave GPS on but that hardly ever implies heavy traffic in actuality. It tends to analyze data and if certain GPS signals are taking a bit of extra time to navigate a street, it adds up and then puts an alert on Maps. But that's more courtesy for people who use the service, it isn't a good way to determine true traffic patterns. We use much more complicated things than your phone to measure that sort of stuff.
Now, unless "traffic" simply means any vehicle on the roads, there is actually very minimal traffic here. Or more accurately, bad traffic i.e. gridlock etc. The roads in this region are pretty superb all things considering. Yes, we need to improve bike lanes, footpaths and maybe figure our ways to allow buses/the LRT to have signal priority so the buses can move around faster, but the traffic itself? North American regions of 620'000+ people would be envious to have the kind of smooth flowing roads we have here.
Also, yeah there are people out there complaining about bike lanes, but it's mostly out of touch boomers ranting on Facebook or Reddit about how it's a waste of tax dollars to spend money on them because...they don't bike themselves. They don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about and no planners in this region are taking their information from these people.
Very, very, very rarely do the roads ever get backed up into gridlock here. Some reasons why this is the case is that a) we unfortunately developed into a very car centric region, so we have a lot of roads, but most of these were designed fairly well to move vehicles, despite what people think; b) we have a city that did not really have a typical Anglo-American grid road layout and our streets are more similar to Continental European cities, meaning we have roads that snake in all sorts of directions which results in fairly good traffic flow and alternative options for people to take to their destinations; c) we constructed nearly 20 kilometers of freeway (Constoga Expressway) which allows traffic to easily flow through this city, with lots of good arterial roads connecting to them, to different parts of the city and to other highways that flow in and out of the region. Despite Waterloo Region being roughly 30 kilometers by 15 kilometers at its greatest sizes, you can drive across this entire region by car in 30 minutes (using Constoga Mall in north Waterloo to Gatehouse Drive in south Cambridge as an example). Try going 30 kilometers in the GTA by vehicle...it'll take you much, much longer.
When is the last time you got stuck in a traffic jam for 20+ minutes (excluding when there are accidents/extreme weather)? The only places there is gridlocked traffic on a regular basis is on the highways - Highway 8 being a good example, particularly where it merges into the Conestoga Expressway/Highway 7 and on rare occasions, near the exits near Northfield, because those have unfortunately awkward designs that are hard to rectify now. Google putting some red lines on Google Maps is not always that accurate. All Google Maps does is spy on people who willingly leave GPS on but that hardly ever implies heavy traffic in actuality. It tends to analyze data and if certain GPS signals are taking a bit of extra time to navigate a street, it adds up and then puts an alert on Maps. But that's more courtesy for people who use the service, it isn't a good way to determine true traffic patterns. We use much more complicated things than your phone to measure that sort of stuff.
Now, unless "traffic" simply means any vehicle on the roads, there is actually very minimal traffic here. Or more accurately, bad traffic i.e. gridlock etc. The roads in this region are pretty superb all things considering. Yes, we need to improve bike lanes, footpaths and maybe figure our ways to allow buses/the LRT to have signal priority so the buses can move around faster, but the traffic itself? North American regions of 620'000+ people would be envious to have the kind of smooth flowing roads we have here.
Also, yeah there are people out there complaining about bike lanes, but it's mostly out of touch boomers ranting on Facebook or Reddit about how it's a waste of tax dollars to spend money on them because...they don't bike themselves. They don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about and no planners in this region are taking their information from these people.