Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed by that.

Same meeting they approved a staff recommendation to remove the Columbia bike lane protection with no clear transition plan to replace it.

Very disappointing news about the bike lane. That’s an obvious location to have better bicycle infrastructure. I’m radical enough to question whether Columbia even needs four motor vehicle lanes. There should be plenty of space for excellent bicycle and pedestrian lanes.

I’m a bit confused about the leaf removal issue. The city has to remove leaves from the street itself, right? So isn’t the only difference really whether it’s legal to sweep leaves from the lawn onto the street? And if people have excess leaves, by far the most efficient way to get rid of them is to do so. It’s totally absurd to bag up leaves and pick them up one bag at a time rather than just vacuuming them up. Am I missing something?

The city spends something like 200,000 just on providing the service. Staff believe that would be the savings if they stopped doing it, even if there is other seasonal maintenance. As for the "most efficient way", I'm not what the most efficient way is, but I can tell you fairly certainly that having two different trucks pickup leaves is not the most efficient way, and having yard waste collection is necessary because not all yard waste is leaves.

In Kitchener, it's extra insulting, some homeowners like myself were expected to bring leaves to the dump sites ourselves. It was no issue for me, I pushed my wheelbarrow there, but apparently there weren't many dump sites. Of course, other properties have collection. Very frustrating. And of course, no sidewalks were ever clear.

As for the bike lane, you're probably right, Columbia could do with 3 lanes, but I doubt council is interested, they almost made the extension four lanes out to Erbsville. That being said, staff do correctly point out that someday....decades in the future, ION Phase 3 might take a lane away from University Ave...so of course, because of that remotely possible very long term future, we can't narrow the road today.