Times when staff didn't follow best practices or local policies for new infra

[danbrotherston]

We have some "context sensitive design guidelines"...meaning, some places should be car focused some places should be less car focused. I have never in my life seen the "less car focused" context applied.

Lane widths are never below the "reccommended" for cars, for bicycles, they rarely exceed the "absolute minimum", staff have on several occasions now pitted bicycles against pedestrians by saying that the sidewalk or bike lane would have to be substandard (below "recommended") while refusing to even acknowledge that the vehicle lanes could be narrowed instead (again, narrowed only from "recommended" to "absolute minimum").

So true. In principle, I agree with the idea that different areas ought to be designed differently — the whole city is not the same. So where is it pedestrians’ and bicyclists’ turn to have really excellent infrastructure while motor vehicles get whatever is left over?

And so often by shaving the excess off a motor vehicle lane you can get enough extra space to make a huge difference in the quality of a pedestrian or bicycle lane. Which only goes to show just how stunningly inefficient motor vehicle infrastructure is for moving large volumes of traffic.

Staff statement that the Northfield bike lanes "meet current standards"...while technically true, no reasonable person can believe they are safe.

I take it as an indictment of our current standards, rather than validation of the as-built road.

I mean, yes and no, certainly the standards are crap...but no, the standards did not require the bike infra to look like that, staff chose to build it that way instead of exploring other viable options, and to claim to see nothing wrong with it is more about justification than about the standards.

But I fully agree the standards also are problematic.