Downtown outdoor spaces

[Acitta]

Well, I personally have no problem cycling at a walking pace if there are a lot of pedestrians around. When I am not on a bike, I am a pedestrian and don't want cyclists hurtling at me at high speed on a shared pathway. The IHT is my main route from Kitchener to Waterloo which I take frequently and it attracts a lot of pedestrians on a nice day. I have to go slower than I would like, but I don't resent it. I get annoyed at those cyclists on skinny tires who weave in and out at high speed around the pedestrians instead of going at a more reasonable pace. I think that we might need a speed limit along there at some point.

Or maybe...we could actually have designed our transportation infrastructure so that it could handle the number of users who are using it.

What would the speed limit be? 15? 20? 25?...Because if it's 15, that's ridiculously slow for cycling, if it's 25, then that's to fast around pedestrians.

The problem is not behaviour, it's bad infrastructure. Complaining about the users of the infra isn't going to solve any problems. I am not complaining about the pedestrians, I am complaining about the city's failure to accomodate all the users of the infra.

15 km/h is not too slow for a  multi-use trail unless you are in a hurry to get somewhere, in which case you should consider an alternate route. Our pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is evolving and as it gets better it will attract more users. I think that we will see the same problem that we have in building highways for cars, induced demand. If you build it, they will come. Just look at how much bicycle traffic there is in places like the Netherlands with their excellent infrastructure. We are nowhere near that amount of use here.