Welcome Guest! In order to take advantage of all the great features that Waterloo Region Connected has to offer, including participating in the lively discussions below, you're going to have to register. The good news is that it'll take less than a minute and you can get started enjoying Waterloo Region's best online community right away. Login or Create an Account
One thing I would really like to see as well is more development around some of the small town centres we already have. It's much harder to build a successful town centre from scratch than it is to intensify around existing town centres like Elmira and New Hamburg. Even if it ends up being standard suburban form, it wouldn't be nearly as far removed from a walkable, pedestrian-friendly urban environment than something tacked on to the city up near Erbville would be.
(02-21-2016, 01:16 PM)SammyOES Wrote: I don't think every area of the city needs to be within X minutes of a major highway.
You are correct in that, and I didn't mean to imply such a requirement.
But the reality is that people living in the suburbs will drive to the highways. Whether they get to those highways using other highways, arterial roads or neighbourhood streets depends on the urban planning and the decisions made about road transportation. There is no east-west arterial connection between Beechwood/Clair Hills and Highway 85, and the north-south Ira Needles is already fairly busy. Looking a decade or two into the future, where will the population growth be, and what is the right approach for managing the traffic to/from those areas?
(02-21-2016, 03:01 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Looking a decade or two into the future, where will the population growth be, and what is the right approach for managing the traffic to/from those areas?
There's a Regional Official Plan to answer that first question (see this map in particular), and generally growth is intended for the central transit corridor, southwest Kitchener, east Kitchener / north Cambridge.
Long time viewer first time posting. I just wanted to share a Fantasy Transit Map I made while procrastinating from my studies. I know its crazy fantasy but I love the idea of transit that doesn't focus around the car. But for all you car lovers I did include highway extensions. In this fantasy Waterloo and Kitchener have amalgamated in to one City called Grand River City. The city boundaries have also been expanded into neighbouring Woolwhich and Wilmont. I've included several separated bike lanes that integrate in with the transit system. For the station names I pretty much just went by cross street/ neighbourhoods but if you better names for the stations give me a heads up. Or if you have a better name for lines. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions how I could improve it?
(02-21-2016, 01:11 PM)westwardloo Wrote: I agree in the thinking that growth will come to mostly to the east of the city. With the new highway 7 being constructed a lot of potential suburban growth will be concentrated in communities like Breslau, Bridgeport and even Bloomingdale. Eventually possibly extending all the way to Guelph to create a new Tri-Cities...
Jesus, I really hope not. It's at least ten kilometres between the edge of development in west Guelph and the Grand River. For that to fill in even substantially would mean a loss of a tremendous amount of high-quality farmland.
I really hope that growth is concentrated along existing transportation infrastructure (both transit and roadway), meaning the 401 and expressway, and the central transit corridor. I'm not so naive as to think the appetite for suburban living will significantly diminish in the future (though I think a lot of the apparent desire is just because that's the form most new building has taken), but there's so many opportunities for infill and intensification, and the creation of new transit corridors, that hopefully the pace of sprawl can be slowed considerably.
I like your map a lot; I think it's a really cool exercise.
(02-21-2016, 03:01 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Looking a decade or two into the future, where will the population growth be, and what is the right approach for managing the traffic to/from those areas?
There's a Regional Official Plan to answer that first question (see this map in particular), and generally growth is intended for the central transit corridor, southwest Kitchener, east Kitchener / north Cambridge.
Within the current version of the plan (which goes out 15 years), that's correct. Although Waterloo is forecast to add 40,000 people and I don't quite see where they will all fit within the current plan.
(02-21-2016, 07:24 AM)jamincan Wrote: More particularly, I believe that the region doesn't want development in that area as it is the primary groundwater recharge area for the area. My reason is more personal; I simply love my bike rides out in that direction and an expressway, even without matching development, would ruin the rural character of that part of the region.
Map date 2080
Will many of us be around in 2040? 2080? You? maybe ... Not me in 2080 and 2040 might be a push!
2080 was just a random year I choose to represent the map. But who knows assuming modest growth of 3% over 5 years, which is very conservative. Multiply 3 by 65/5= 13X 3= 39%. Then multiply current population of the region 510,000 X 1.39 = 700,000 is the minimum forecast for the region by 2080. More likely growth should be consistent at 5% so really, 510,000 X 1.65= 841,500 is reasonable number to expect to live in the region by then. It doesn't matter if you're going to be alive in 65 years or not, we still need to put down the ground work for a sustainable livable city whether we're around to enjoy the outcome. I have this argument with my grandma all the time she feels the LRT is a waste of her tax money cause she won't be around to enjoy the benefits. She just won't accept that this is short sighted, selfish thinking on her behalf and doesn't understand that by building the LRT now, people decades from now will be thanking the people of today for planning and implement a project like this.
The belt line bus loop reminds of an expansion of the current Number 8 that, appropriately enough, does a figure 8 passing through Conestoga Mall, the Charles Street Terminal and Fairview Mall.
02-22-2016, 04:40 PM (This post was last modified: 02-22-2016, 04:40 PM by SammyOES.)
(02-21-2016, 07:19 PM)MidTowner Wrote: Jesus, I really hope not. It's at least ten kilometres between the edge of development in west Guelph and the Grand River. For that to fill in even substantially would mean a loss of a tremendous amount of high-quality farmland.
I really hope that growth is concentrated along existing transportation infrastructure (both transit and roadway), meaning the 401 and expressway, and the central transit corridor. I'm not so naive as to think the appetite for suburban living will significantly diminish in the future (though I think a lot of the apparent desire is just because that's the form most new building has taken), but there's so many opportunities for infill and intensification, and the creation of new transit corridors, that hopefully the pace of sprawl can be slowed considerably.
I think Guelph doesn't have a lot of room to come west because they've already expanded close to their city boundaries [Although in 65 years, this could certainly change]. But there'll be a lot of development along highway 7 coming East from Kitchener. The current development plans I think go to Shantz Station.
If the Go station goes in there, it seems reasonable that development will continue expanding east until the Woolwich / Guelph townline. So while I doubt 65 years will see the whole stretch filled in, I wouldn't be surprised to see about half developed.
(02-22-2016, 01:22 PM)westwardloo Wrote: 2080 was just a random year I choose to represent the map. But who knows assuming modest growth of 3% over 5 years, which is very conservative. Multiply 3 by 65/5= 13X 3= 39%. Then multiply current population of the region 510,000 X 1.39 = 700,000 is the minimum forecast for the region by 2080. More likely growth should be consistent at 5% so really, 510,000 X 1.65= 841,500 is reasonable number to expect to live in the region by then. It doesn't matter if you're going to be alive in 65 years or not, we still need to put down the ground work for a sustainable livable city whether we're around to enjoy the outcome. I have this argument with my grandma all the time she feels the LRT is a waste of her tax money cause she won't be around to enjoy the benefits. She just won't accept that this is short sighted, selfish thinking on her behalf and doesn't understand that by building the LRT now, people decades from now will be thanking the people of today for planning and implement a project like this.
HeidiHo westwarloo (I lived in the "westwardloo" when growing up), I personally very much enjoyed your insight and adventure into the next decades in mapping Waterloo Region's possible connected future.
Just like the explorers of 150 or 200 years ago, cartographic insight adventure maps, like yours, have been a place in establishing a connection with our past to our future. Perhaps like other travelers and adventurers maps your map will be an historically informative and discussed document, as it is here.
Future visioning is extremely important as I witness the Luddites who write comments or are paid by the local newspaper rag to opine about things they know nothing about.
Just for fun, I made another updated Grand River Fantasy Transit map. I made this a while back but never got around to posting it. Obviously, phase 2 to Cambridge has proposed a different route. I personally don't think bypassing Preston for a large industrial wasteland is a particularly good option, but I do understand some residents concerns with option presented.
Let me know what everyone thinks. I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at the potential timelines, I just kind of threw random date in that I thought could work. Again it is just a fantasy map made in my spare time. It is not necessarily an accurate prediction of what the region's transit situation might turn out like. Hope you like it.
It's my first time posting an image on this site so I will attach the PDF as well. The pdf contains the original map underlayed.
07-14-2017, 07:20 AM (This post was last modified: 07-14-2017, 07:22 AM by MidTowner.)
Is the orange ("King") line supposed to be a kind of relief for the Main and Victoria lines? It looks like it actually follows Weber rather than King for much of it, is that right? Weber definitely should have a frequent bus down at least the majority of its length, but I'm not so sure about rail stops at (for instance) Weber/Victoria and Weber/Union- those are very close to Ion Phase I. In 40+ years, though, who knows?
Does your Victoria line run roughly the same as the 20 today?
![[Image: LzvOexf.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/LzvOexf.png?1)