Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Stop me if I'm wrong about how these things work.

The lights along Erb street are synchronized in a green wave. Why can't the bicycle signal at the spur line crossing be configured to automatically change in sequence along with signals at other cross streets? At least during the daytime?

While this is a one way street, which makes green waves easier, I suspect this is something that is possible in theory, but doesn't really work in practice.  I'm not an expert though, and have no idea about this particular situation.

There are different schools of thought, some planners in the Netherlands argue that green waving is such an intractable problem that minimizing wait time at each individual intersection is more effective.  And that's what I think can and should be done here.  If the light sequencing was improved, and the sensor was moved back 50 - 70 meters from the intersection, so as to trigger it 10-20 seconds before arriving, I would expect that the majority of cyclists approaching the intersection would get a green on arrival, without affecting flow of traffic.  This would be far better than the current situation.

Of course, I'm not an expert, so I can't really say for sure that this is better, but surely there is some way to model this to determine.  I wish I had the skills/resources to do so.