01-03-2019, 10:34 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-03-2019, 10:44 AM by danbrotherston.)
On bike lane plowing.
The city (both Kitchener and Waterloo I believe) claim to plow bike lanes. This claim has various levels of truth to it.
At the one end, the city and it's employees absolutely do make an attempt to clear bike lanes of snow.
At the other, some bike lanes in the city are made more dangerous by this attempt (in my opinion).
The bike lanes that are best cleared are very wide (1.5-1.8 m + gutter), on two lane roads, here there is enough room and little enough snow for the plow to effectively move the snow out of a sufficiently wide portion of the lane to make it safe to use.
The most dangerous bike lanes are the ones that are (1.25 m + gutter or less--and yes, some are less), on four lane roads, here, despite what I'm sure is still an actual attempt, the bike lane ends up being so narrow and so full of snow, that all it does is give drivers the belief that I should be out of their way, without giving me any space to do so.
In both cases, the lanes will have occasional snow piles from the plow.
I don't actually even know if it would be possible to reasonably plow the narrow lanes. Just another reason the minimum bike lane standard should be 1.5 or better. That being said, given that we have 1.25 meter and less lanes, I wonder if we should even bother plowing them, at this point, it seems like it makes things worse for everyone.
And yes, I was passed extremely closely by a garbage truck this morning.
I'll be returning to the less direct much slower entirely off road route to my work from this point forward.
On the other hand, on my ride up the trail through Waterloo Park, I saw many many cyclists...
The city (both Kitchener and Waterloo I believe) claim to plow bike lanes. This claim has various levels of truth to it.
At the one end, the city and it's employees absolutely do make an attempt to clear bike lanes of snow.
At the other, some bike lanes in the city are made more dangerous by this attempt (in my opinion).
The bike lanes that are best cleared are very wide (1.5-1.8 m + gutter), on two lane roads, here there is enough room and little enough snow for the plow to effectively move the snow out of a sufficiently wide portion of the lane to make it safe to use.
The most dangerous bike lanes are the ones that are (1.25 m + gutter or less--and yes, some are less), on four lane roads, here, despite what I'm sure is still an actual attempt, the bike lane ends up being so narrow and so full of snow, that all it does is give drivers the belief that I should be out of their way, without giving me any space to do so.
In both cases, the lanes will have occasional snow piles from the plow.
I don't actually even know if it would be possible to reasonably plow the narrow lanes. Just another reason the minimum bike lane standard should be 1.5 or better. That being said, given that we have 1.25 meter and less lanes, I wonder if we should even bother plowing them, at this point, it seems like it makes things worse for everyone.
And yes, I was passed extremely closely by a garbage truck this morning.
I'll be returning to the less direct much slower entirely off road route to my work from this point forward.
On the other hand, on my ride up the trail through Waterloo Park, I saw many many cyclists...