10-21-2022, 10:06 AM
(10-20-2022, 07:14 PM)ac3r Wrote: So for those posters who are more familiar with infrastructure, where do you think they could add in new bike lanes or multi-use trails in order to improve transportation - particularly for those wanting to travel north-south?
It's perhaps a little out of the way, but River Road is prime for separated bike lanes for its entire length; I did email the city a year ago about River Road, and they heavily implied that when that street comes up for reconstruction next, it will be getting the whole treatment. The lanes are wide (lots of extra space to work with), you never see it packed with traffic, and it would connect Victoria/Frederick/Krug/Lorraine/Ottawa/Fairway/King Streets, about half of which already have bike lanes. If you added some offshoots into the neighbourhoods you want to connect (like a spur that branched down Fergus Ave to reach Hiway Zehrs and the new Elevate condos), that could get you some connectivity that doesn't rely on cramming bike lanes onto already-busy King and Weber.
For Dellroy Ave specifically, I wonder if there's space to run a little MUT along the highway, behind the buildings all the way from Franklin to Dellroy/Wilfred, connecting those dead-end streets together? Probably would be a little noisy from the highway, but you wouldn't have to contend with the traffic on Weber, at least.
The train tracks running along King could be a logical place to put a MUT as a continuation of the River Rd bike lanes (west to Fairway and east to the Grand), and if I'm just spending imaginary money on all my wildest dreams, it would be fabulous to see a dedicated pedestrian/bike bridge spanning the Grand River near the Freeport Bridge. You could probably run a separated bike lane up King St until about Deer Ridge, although getting up to where the Sportsworld LRT station will eventually be built at Sportsworld Crossing Rd would be even better. Would love to see a bike path go right up Sportsworld Crossing Rd to the Park & Ride, with a big secure bike parking area to encourage people to cycle there instead of driving.
Putting bike infrastructure into the Sportsworld neighbourhood in general is probably going to be tricky. There's a lot of existing traffic, and King St is already going to lose space to the LRT tracks. There are some pretty big buffer spaces between the road and a lot of the buildings, though, so we might see the city/region buy up some a strip of that land to put towards that purpose.