Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

1) Are ebikes allowed on the sidewalk?

Coke

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/driver/...cles.shtml

Where to ride an e-bike
You can ride your e-bike on most roads and highways where conventional bikes are permitted, with some exceptions.

You can't ride your e-bike:

on certain provincial controlled access highways, such as the 400 series, the Queen Elizabeth Way, the Queensway in Ottawa or the Kitchener-Waterloo Expressway
on municipal roads, including sidewalks, where bicycles are banned under municipal by-laws
on municipal roads, sidewalks, bike paths, bike trails or bike lanes where e-bikes are prohibited


I've been watching this installation go on (as most of us have) all summer and I just dreaded the amount of driveways this MUT crosses. Way too many chances for interactions with vehicular traffic for ebike, pedestrians and cyclists. So what you have seen just proves my concern is justified.

This concern was raised by ATAC as well, and at the public consultation.

Honestly, our engineers are basically just automatons. Every time this was raised they repeated the mantra "the design guide allows a MUT where the driveways are fewer than x per 100 meters". Yes, Victoria satisfies this. But the design guide does not consider, and the engineers refused to consider the nature of those driveway conflicts. They would refuse to put a MUT on a section of residential street which had a dozen driveways for single family homes that are 6 meters wide and see 2-4 cars turn per day moving at a crawling pace. Victoria has commercial driveways with massive turn radii which are 20-60 meters wide and see thousands of turns per day with turning speeds in excess of 40km/h. Yet they treat these the same. Makes me angry. They refused to even consider additional measures to make the driveway conflicts more visible to drivers (and there are many options).  Honestly...I'm glad there's something here now, but our engineers are bad at what they do.