General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

I think King (from Cedar to Ottawa or so, at least) would be the best alternative.  It's central, there is available width, and the traffic volumes are far smaller than on Weber.  If we push for an East-West cycling route, that would be the one to push for.

Charles is constrained by the LRT and Courtland has a fair bit of traffic as well. 

Are either King or Charles due to get sharrows?  I think at least on Charles they should work fairly well.  Or would investing further in the IHT be the best option in the end?

King in downtown Kitchener has had "super sharrows" for a while, although not from Cedar to Ottawa. I think we've seen that King/Cedar has a lot of collisions for some reason, but for the rest of it it doesn't seem too bad to me (but not super awesome, of course). I still kind of prefer Weber, although traffic does move more slowly on King. Around there the IHT is still a bit far, although not as far as at Victoria.

King has super sharrows, but I don't consider sharrows infrastructure, and seems like the vast majority of people don't either, and as you say, the traffic congestion affect law following cyclists as well.  

The south end of King was recently approved to be reconstructed with no infrastructure.  Charles is already rebuilt with no infra (and worse, with a width which is just wide enough to make drivers universally bullying, but narrow enough to make passing dangerous), and Courtland (which is pretty near the IHT) was also rebuilt with no proper cycle lanes (although wide enough in most places to allow safe passing).  Ironically, Courtland was rebuilt without cycle lanes, because the most recent cycling plan said Mill St. is supposed to get cycle lanes, only problem is, Mill was rebuilt a year before also without cycle lanes, thus the cycling plan was effectively used to quash any cycle lanes in the area for a minimum of two decades.


Personally I think your right, King St. is where they should be, but I expect this to be a long term hole in the cycling network in the city.