General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

Kitchener’s Duke Street could be transformed to discourage cars, favour transit and cyclists [The Record]

Pleasantly surprised - I figured the Duke St section of the downtown grid as proposed by the city was unlikely to come because of the ROW limitations and the Region's apathy to do anything AT priority. Would be nice if 30 kph became more the norm for downtown ped/bike priority areas though instead of 40.

Hoping this means they are looking to be as forward thinking with Benton/Frederick as well.

I'm not.

It's mediocre, and typical. It shows again that the region refuses to prioritize cycling under any circumstances.

Leaving aside the fact that without millions of dollars of enforcement, most drivers will ignore the no through signs, which is exactly what we see happening in Toronto.

They are "considering" 40! You can't make this up, it's insanely bad.  I'm not having my child share the road with the over 500 buses that will use this corridor.

It's also a lie. If they wanted to, they could run buses up the LRT right of way, and use one lane for buses in the other direction, and one lane for bikes. But they won't. Because running buses and LRT together might slow down transit. Because running with bikes won't slow down transit? Why not? Because as usual they aren't planning to have bikes there.

The ONLY good thing about this plan is it should be easy to fix because it's not infrastructure.

This is also coming from the same minds who insisted they could not possibly put in protected bike lanes on University Ave because it was impossible to transition from protected bike lanes to painted bike lanes. Somehow that transition isn't a problem coming from a two way protected bike lane on one side of the road to no infra.

The city should not endorse it, they should stand up for something for once instead of compromising it. They should fucking call the region out as the obstacle to the city they are.

The bike network is ON Duke because it was the ONLY corridor where the region would even consider protecting cyclists, and it's no surprise they are now refusing. We *COULD* have had it on Weber, there's space there, but we don't.

*sigh*...I'm glad I'm leaving guys, this is absolutely no surprise.

What I am disappointed by is the positive response to it...it's like we have such low expectations that we'll take a sign as a win. Sharrows weren't good enough...neither is this.