Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

This is one of the biggest gaps in our cycling map in mind, between downtown Kitchener, Fairview Mall and Conestoga College's Doon campus - a good route connecting these three locations would probably include Hidden Valley. As it exists now, cyclists need to brave sharing a major road with cars at some points, or take completely inconvenient detours.

Ideally, Wilson Ave from Franklin St S to Homer Watson Park would include some safe facilities. But I worry with the installation of the River Road extension, which includes roundabouts at Wilson, won't include these facilities. If you can't tell from my username, I have an interest in this particular path!

Yeah, you've got a great point! It would be nice if they could connect the Conestoga College Doon campus better especially because a lot of students don't have cars. There is the Walter Bean Grand River Trail that snakes along the Grand River which is useful, but it ends up dumping you off at the Freeport Bridge and since it follows the river itself, it's very long to ride and doesn't get you to any truly useful destinations. There are also trails going through Homer Watson Park, but again those aren't the greatest (especially in winter - neither trails are maintained AFAIK).

Utilizing bike lanes on Homer Watson would be useful or even Manitou which would allow cyclists to connect to Fairway Station and all the buses/LRT. But unfortunately, Homer Watson is a challenging street to utilize for cyclists because it's 4 lanes wide, has multiple roundabouts and tends to have heavy traffic due to connecting roads like Blockline, Ottawa and the Conestoga Expressway. It could be possible to get a good MUT that runs through the Homer Watson woods, then up to perhaps Wilson to Fairway Station. It would be nice if it could continue on - perhaps using some space near the CP freight yard (though CP would most certainly never want that, they are hard to negotiate with) - then on to Mill Station to Courtland or King and into downtown. There are so many options for improving cycling networks here.

I agree that much of the city is very inaccessible by bike, but Hidden Valley is actually quite accessible to the downtown cores, I've ridden that way several times, going to Wabanaki Dr. through the best buy parking lot to cross Fairway Rd. then through the parking lot and to Wilson (or now the trail parallel to the LRT and up Vanier) and to Wilson Park and then under the expressway at Eckert, then through Rockway Gardens and onto the Iron Horse Trail. It's like, adjacent to one of the most major bike routes in the city.  And obviously you can also pick up the LRT at Fairway. I literally do this ride for recreation (although the part through Fairway and Bestbuy are unpleasant to be sure).

As for our protected bike lanes, the initial grid is downtown because that's where the most opportunity is (along with the university district). Some of our census areas have almost a 10% bike mode share. If you look at the cycling plan for Kitchener, long term, most of these areas are intended to be served, but it will take some time. Sadly, council has already significantly drawn out the timeline. The downtown grid probably should have been done in one year, staff proposed 2 years as a compromise, which council drew out to 3 years. So it's going to be a long time to build out the rest.

Westmount has no planned bike lanes as a result of the COVID lanes. It will get MUTs between Glasgow and Highland, the rest of the road, which is a bike route on the transportation plan, will be a fight, one that won't be won unless there is big turnover in the next election.

It's certainly possible to get from any point A to B to C destination by whatever mode of transport one wishes to use here, but the main problem is that it's rather time consuming. In many cases it's not safe, or certain parts of a route one may use are not maintained in winter. Recreational cycling is one thing, but when someone is wishing to choose it as a mode of transportation to get to work or run errands, time is a consideration.

This is where I think better MUT or separated bike lanes can come into play. Get some good paved trails and separated bike lanes where they are needed - maintain them in the winter - which connect all sorts of different areas of the city...and you can basically start to create MUT "expressways". That is, they have their own rights of way (i.e. trails) or protected lanes (separated bike lanes) that allow people to have more confidence in cycling around the region without having to worry about someone on a cell phone flattening them into a pancake. Adding on to the term "expressway" regarding bikes, it'd also be awesome to consider and use either tunnels or bridges in order to allow users to pass streets without having to stop or risk themselves. This is a very common feature in European cities.

There are so many potentials, I just hope the region/cities are willing to research and invest in them. They'd obviously take years to complete planning processes, engineering, land rights, zoning, contracting crews, construction itself etc but it would be great if our cities and region would be willing to take a progressive, inclusive stance to improving all of this. If they were paved MUTs, wheelchair/walker/scooter users would also benefit so they aren't mingling with traffic. 4 wheel vehicular traffic can still exist and run just as well even with all of this too. There are so many potentials and routes we could easily utilize here, it'd just take some willpower to achieve.

There are MUTs along HomerWatson all the way from doon campus to the bike lanes on Ottawa. As for Hidden Valley the route I explained is fairly direct and extremely comfortable, easily commutable. That was the point of my post.