General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[dtkvictim]

How about we just eliminate sidewalks and trails and make every road in the city a pedestrian sharrow.

To think about: what is the difference between this, and having many woonerfs in the city?

I have some ideas on the differences, and I think there are some, but all joking aside I think this deserves some careful thinking.

Yeah, more seriously, there is something to this. A huge number of streets in Tokyo (and Japan in generally) are de facto pedestrian streets, but every so often a car slowly rolls through them. However, there are many streets with the same design (no sidewalk) that see a much higher proportion of vehicle traffic, and these are much less pleasant. I really don't know what dynamics are at play, but Dutch woonerfs seem to be much more intentional, whereas the Japanese style ones seem more like a happy coincidence or side effect of a population that walks more.