Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[Acitta]

https://kitchener.citynews.ca/local-news...ts-5408099

New bike lane on Bridge (University to Lancaster) and a couple new roundabouts. As someone that often bikes through the Ebycrest/Kraft/Sawmill intersection I'm glad they are making it a roundabout.

The article says it will save time for motorists. Nothing about the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

[ijmorlan]

Check out the idiot in the comments saying that it’s $10 million spent on bike lanes to make 6 people happy.

[nms]

Benjamin Road on the northern edge of Waterloo, between Westmount Rd and Weber St has flexiposts installed on the shoulders as well as on the yellow lines. While it is doing a good job of keeping traffic to 60km/h, the new arrangement does not leave adequate shoulder space for the horses and buggies that travel that route on the way to the Market.

[Jefferson]

Check out the idiot in the comments saying that it’s $10 million spent on bike lanes to make 6 people happy.

I read that comment earlier today. That person typically leaves really terrible comments about bike lanes. Definitely annoying!

[Bob_McBob]

Benjamin Road on the northern edge of Waterloo, between Westmount Rd and Weber St has flexiposts installed on the shoulders as well as on the yellow lines. While it is doing a good job of keeping traffic to 60km/h, the new arrangement does not leave adequate shoulder space for the horses and buggies that travel that route on the way to the Market.

I actually feel like these flexiposts might be poorly placed for a different reason. Since the road is open with no other restrictions and a higher than residential speed limit, it makes it obvious to drivers they can safely zoom through each pair at a slight angle without actually slowing down. I certainly had no issue taking them at 70 km/h like usual for this section of road, and I'm usually the one holding up traffic at that speed.

[danbrotherston]

Whoever wrote this headline should be fired for publishing this kind of thing...honestly, it's an outright lie

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...erloo.html

75% of residents support lowering the speed limit, that's the headline.

In any case, if you look past the highly misleading article, this is a good news story, and I hope that Waterloo will ignore stuff like this, and move on it.

Sadly, there is likely to be huge uproar about it...a certain segment of the population is going to throw a very loud tantrum...

[cherrypark]

Zero surprise from the paper whose editorial article was a bad faith summary of the public engagement and that this one is written by Outhit.

[ac3r]

Ugh our local media sucks. CBC seems to be the only major outlet here that isn't absolute trash. There's plenty of smaller organizations as well, though they generally have very niche coverage.

[nms]

Ugh our local media sucks. CBC seems to be the only major outlet here that isn't absolute trash. There's plenty of smaller organizations as well, though they generally have very niche coverage.

Is there anything that is actually locally-owned anymore? The Record has succeeded in buying up and then extinguishing all local newspapers. With the exception of CKWR, most radio stations are editorially controlled from elsewhere. Ditto TV.

I hear that the people at WRConnected are pretty scrappy and well-informed ... :-)

[ac3r]

There's small papers like the Community Edition but apart from that I don't know anything that is truly local here. CBC - while obviously not local - made a conscious choice to open up their studios downtown which was great. The rest have been bought up and moved away - either to Toronto or to the suburbs.

[danbrotherston]

Man, I had a "Netherlands is remarkable" road safety moment the other day. We were visiting the COVID facility (testing and vaccination) which is basically a huge temporary structure. The parking area for this facility is all denoted with traffic cones because it is temporary. The roadway around the structure to the exit is a long straight section and despite it being a temporary facility they made chicains demarked with traffic cones for traffic calming.

Even temporary facilities have traffic calming!

And these weren't little either, someone in a ridiculous pickup that is so popular in Canada would struggle to navigate them without hitting any cones.

[jwilliamson]

Does anyone know what the rules are when there is a traffic light for a pedestrian crossing at an intersection, but the traffic light doesn't cross one of the roads at the intersection? I'm specifically thinking about the intersection at Albert and Seagram here.

Albert is North-South, and there is a traffic light across Albert that turns red after the pedestrian button is pushed. Immediately to the south of the light Seagram T-intersects Albert, I think with a stop sign. To the south of Seagram there is a stop line for northbound traffic on Albert.

When the light is green it's obvious what everyone should do. When the light is red:
1. Do cars turning from Albert northbound to Seagram need to stop? They are facing a red light and making a left turn, which suggests yes, but if the traffic light only controls the pedestrian crossing then it shouldn't affect them.
2. After stopping at the stop sign, do cars turning from Seagram to Albert northbound need to wait for the light to turn green, or can they turn once the crosswalk is clear?

[ijmorlan]

Does anyone know what the rules are when there is a traffic light for a pedestrian crossing at an intersection, but the traffic light doesn't cross one of the roads at the intersection? I'm specifically thinking about the intersection at Albert and Seagram here.

Albert is North-South, and there is a traffic light across Albert that turns red after the pedestrian button is pushed. Immediately to the south of the light Seagram T-intersects Albert, I think with a stop sign. To the south of Seagram there is a stop line for northbound traffic on Albert.

When the light is green it's obvious what everyone should do. When the light is red:
1. Do cars turning from Albert northbound to Seagram need to stop? They are facing a red light and making a left turn, which suggests yes, but if the traffic light only controls the pedestrian crossing then it shouldn't affect them.
2. After stopping at the stop sign, do cars turning from Seagram to Albert northbound need to wait for the light to turn green, or can they turn once the crosswalk is clear?

When it’s green it is obvious as you say; it’s just like if the traffic light wasn’t there, except for pedestrians who presumably aren’s supposed to cross against the red hand. Not sure about pedestrians crossing Albert on the south side of Seagram.

When it’s red, your questions are interesting, and there is an additional question: can southbound cars on Albert turn right? Normally, right turn on red is permitted in Ontario.

To me, it is clear that there are 2 choices: Either the signal is associated with the intersection, or it is not.

If it is associated with the intersection, then right turn on red is permitted, because there is no sign to the contrary. The left turn you mention would normally be prohibited, but there is in my mind some doubt, because there is no green for Seagram.

If it is not associated with the intersection, then the right turn is prohibited, because it isn’t really a right turn on red: it would be running a red, followed by turning right at the next (unsignalized) intersection. But on the other hand in this case the left turn is clearly permitted, as the intersection itself is just a stop sign.

As to your question about cars on Seagram: the lights aren’t facing them, so definitely do not control them (not a lawyer). All they have to do is stop, and proceed when safe, yielding to all other vehicular and pedestrian traffic (not legal advice).

I don’t really like these sort-of signalized intersections. They lead to anomalous situations, which is bad for safety. Similar issues arise at Peppler and Erb. When turning left from Peppler to Erb, if the pedestrian/bike signal is green, car traffic on Erb is stopped; but pedestrians can still be crossing Peppler, so it’s not the same situation as if traffic on Peppler had a green.

Back to the original intersection, I think one idea would be to change the northbound signal to be straight-through arrows (green, yellow, red) positioned above the straight-through lane only, to make it clear that turning traffic is not controlled by the signal. Of course I probably just proposed breaking about 10 different points in the traffic manual…

[danbrotherston]

Does anyone know what the rules are when there is a traffic light for a pedestrian crossing at an intersection, but the traffic light doesn't cross one of the roads at the intersection? I'm specifically thinking about the intersection at Albert and Seagram here.

Albert is North-South, and there is a traffic light across Albert that turns red after the pedestrian button is pushed. Immediately to the south of the light Seagram T-intersects Albert, I think with a stop sign. To the south of Seagram there is a stop line for northbound traffic on Albert.

When the light is green it's obvious what everyone should do. When the light is red:
1. Do cars turning from Albert northbound to Seagram need to stop? They are facing a red light and making a left turn, which suggests yes, but if the traffic light only controls the pedestrian crossing then it shouldn't affect them.
2. After stopping at the stop sign, do cars turning from Seagram to Albert northbound need to wait for the light to turn green, or can they turn once the crosswalk is clear?

Albert and Segram is an IPS.

For 1. Yes, Albert cars must all stop, there is a red light and the stop bar for the light is before the Albert intersection. Crossing that bar is turning against the light.

For 2. Cars turning from Seagram to Albert must stop for pedestrians, but it is unclear to me if they need to wait till the light turns green.

There's a weirder one on Albert though, at Erb, there is a diverter island that appears like a right turn slip ramp island. A pedestrian who wants to cross Bridgeport will get a walk sign across Bridgeport, but must cross to the diverter island to cross Bridgeport. At an intersection with a right turn slip ramp, peds can cross the slip ramp with the right of way (there is a yield sign), but here, drivers have an explicit green light and will not stop or yield.

To me the right answer is either control the crossing to the island explicitly with a signal or with a yield sign. But as is, it frankly is anti-pedestrian bordering on entrapment. And very close to uptown at that.

[Acitta]

How Street Design Shapes the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Fatalities