Walking in Waterloo Region

[MidTowner]

It's interesting that you say that, because the guidelines suggest placing these crossovers at least 200 m from a controlled crossing. The Weber Street trail crossing is closer to Lincoln Road than that, and the Spur Line also crosses Union fairly close to Moore. Even the Bridgeport crossing is less than 200 m from Peppler. It seems like a lot of problematic crossings fall into this category. And 200 m is a long way to ask pedestrians to travel.

Thanks for pointing that out. You're right on all counts- Union and the Spur Line are even closer than Lincoln and Laurel.

For better or worse, people won’t divert two or three hundred meters out of their way. The Spur Line is too new for me to see patterns of behaviour, but the Laurel Trail at Weber, it seems like most trail users do not detour to Lincoln even though crossing Weber there is (at least for me) at times a bit nerve-racking.

On Union, some motorists seem to already be in the practice yielding their right of way to trail users. That’s maybe a nice courtesy, but it’s dangerous when behaviour is unpredictable and people have different expectations.

I can still think of lots of Regional roads where there is plenty more distance than 200 meters between crosswalks.