Cycling in Waterloo Region

[ijmorlan]

Beat me to it. Still there as of 2:15:

I think we’re owed a fairly abject explanation from the City why that vehicle has not been towed. Not interested in any BS excuses.

[jeffster]

Beat me to it. Still there as of 2:15:

I think we’re owed a fairly abject explanation from the City why that vehicle has not been towed. Not interested in any BS excuses.

Shayne Turner (Waterloo Enforcement)was just on CTV-Kitchener and was telling the news that they started ticketing, but if these pictures are from today, doesn't sound like they've started anything yet.

Found it interesting watching the video, some guy in the background was moving the pylons so he could park his car.

[Canard]

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1435520

"They've been aware of the problem since the weekend"

Ahaahahahhahahahahahahahaahhaa

[danbrotherston]

They will have a dedicated enforcement officer for 2 weeks.

Great, so we should have relatively clear lanes for a couple of days after that, and then back to full time car parking.

To be honest, I'm surprised they're actually enforcing, I didn't think they actually would. I still don't think it'll make a difference long term.

And yes, "They've been aware of the problem since the weekend", it's like they're intentionally antagonising us.

[Canard]

On my way home I went by. There weren't any cars parked in the lanes, but... Lion's Brewery decided to pile about 10 bags of trash completely blocking the lanes.

I guess they couldn't put a ticket on the bags.

[Bob_McBob]

Good post on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/comme...ling_on_a/

[danbrotherston]

Good post on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/comme...ling_on_a/

Good post indeed, and some useful dialogue as well.

I don't understand the logic of taking a road (Guelph Street in this case) identified as a priority cycling route, narrowing it, and posting signs for everyone to share the road. Instead of narrowing, why not create a proper bike lane with that space?

Iirc, aren't there designated bike lanes on Union between Lancaster and Breithaupt bush? I'm just trying to figure out why the approach by the city is so inconsistent around the design of these streets.

Every road does deserve individual consideration, I don't necessarily think it's inconsistent, to apply different tools in different contexts.

Shared roads are totally reasonable for cyclists to use, this is in fact the most common bike infrastructure in the Netherlands.

The problem is, that we're generally unwilling to build sharable roads.  Narrowing is the right idea, but something more like 2.8 meters per lane, or less, and with substantial optical narrowing, where the edges have for example, cobbles.  A road with low traffic, could even be only 1 lane with turnouts for passing.  But our traffic engineers are lightyears away from being willing to build such a road--you can see, they weren't even allowed to use vertical diversions.

The latest BicycleDutch article has a great example of this: 

https://bicycledutch.files.wordpress.com...lpad02.jpg

(Article here: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2018/...ly-opened/)

The colour, narrowness, vertical diversions, and wide gutters, make drivers slow and share the road safely.

They work great in residential areas, sometimes even get away without sidewalks, and are much safer for the residents of the road.

I don't think KW has more than one or two roads that would even qualify here (Market Ln. is close).  Until we're willing to build such roads, I don't think sharing is a real option here.

[tomh009]

What's a vertical diversion? The Dutch cycling article didn't mention that.

[jamincan]

Speed bumps.

[ijmorlan]

What's a vertical diversion? The Dutch cycling article didn't mention that.

I think it means bumps, humps, or any other vertical diversion of the road surface. I think long speed humps are underused — they make the street uncomfortable for fast traffic without making much difference to traffic moving at an appropriate speed. By contrast, old fashioned speed bumps require slowing to almost zero to go over, which does not improve safety compared to a more reasonable speed. The main counter-argument seems to be from emergency services, but I consider that to be mostly invalid because most of the trip taken by emergency services will be on main streets that obviously will not have humps (being designed for some measure of speed). If the residential street which is the location of the call has humps, that just delays the last 1 minute or so of the ambulance trip by a few seconds. In the meantime, on all the days when an ambulance isn’t called for, the slower traffic is saving lives.

[Bob_McBob]

CTV aired a segment on the new uptown bike lanes, and a driver actually moved construction cones to park while they were there 

https://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1435520

(around 0:50)

[danbrotherston]

My point for Guelph Street is that there was plenty of room to build a dedicated bike lane. Why not take that option as opposed to a 'share the road' approach where room permits. It's safer and provides a more comfortable ride. 

Having spent a great deal of time in the Netherlands for work (primarily Amsterdam and Oosterhout), a majority of the cycling infrastructure is dedicated and separated bike lanes. Shared spaces are primarily in the core areas.

Bike infrastructure on main roads is dedicated.

But the majority of roads are small residential streets, the same is true here, which are usually shared, again also true here, with good design, definitely not true here.

But it isn't a "bike infra road" thing, it's just a "this is how we build safe roads" thing...every road is built this way.

And frankly, it's stupid that we don't, the way we build roads is less safe, and MORE expensive.

It might be the case that the extra cost to widen Guelph St. would be a waste because of traffic levels, and it would be better use of money to narrow it and share it, but I don't know because I'm neither a traffic engineer, nor privy to the traffic data.

But because we cannot build safe roads, then that isn't a real option.

[welltoldtales]

It also gives the impression that they don't consider all our roads to be a network - the region has theirs and the cities have their own and they shouldn't consider the big picture. Very frustrating.

My point for Guelph Street is that there was plenty of room to build a dedicated bike lane. Why not take that option as opposed to a 'share the road' approach where room permits. It's safer and provides a more comfortable ride. 

Having spent a great deal of time in the Netherlands for work (primarily Amsterdam and Oosterhout), a majority of the cycling infrastructure is dedicated and separated bike lanes. Shared spaces are primarily in the core areas.

Bike infrastructure on main roads is dedicated.

But the majority of roads are small residential streets, the same is true here, which are usually shared, again also true here, with good design, definitely not true here.

But it isn't a "bike infra road" thing, it's just a "this is how we build safe roads" thing...every road is built this way.

And frankly, it's stupid that we don't, the way we build roads is less safe, and MORE expensive.

It might be the case that the extra cost to widen Guelph St. would be a waste because of traffic levels, and it would be better use of money to narrow it and share it, but I don't know because I'm neither a traffic engineer, nor privy to the traffic data.

But because we cannot build safe roads, then that isn't a real option.

Guelph could not have added bike lanes with the widths, and if they did they wouldn't be separated and painted instead which would probably increase speed on Guelph Street. What the city did was "pinch" the intersections to make it look tighter. My understanding is that they started focusing on reducing speeds and then ended up working a lot more on low-impact paving/parking (you'll notice that some of the parking spaces paving looks different, it is more porous). I actually haven't had too many issues on Guelph but there is definitely a "breaking in" period that is necessary. Many drivers still believe that Guelph is some sort of bypass to King.

[Canard]

Speed Bumps are awful for everyone.

• Drivers will slow down for them... which wastes enormous amounts of fuel when they accelerate again after them, because nobody will drive at a continuous 30 km/h between them (ie, they just don’t psycologically work).
  
• Residents near them get to endure the constant noise of cars accelerating rapidly to get to the next one.
  
• They are jarring for cyclists.
  
• They are a nightmare for busses and snowploughs.

I would argue they are one of the worst ways to calm traffic.

[clasher]

City of Kitchener (and Waterloo) just doesn't give a s--t about stuff like this, I mean the iron horse is in week 10 or whatever of its 5 week closure...