Routes and Secrets of east Waterloo

Fall looms

It's that part of September that is still officially summer, but is fall in spirit. It's positively autumnal these last few days. And it feels good! Even if it's a tad wet. I admit that I wussed out of cycling through Tuesday morning's deluge and took transit instead.

I've not blogged much about #loabKW lately, because there hasn't really been anything very interesting to say. I bike during the week. It's normal. The Lexington expressway crossing still sucks, but that's normal too. Groceries get bought, places get visited, life is surprisingly unremarkable.

But I do like the ducks. And the bunnies. I see a lot of each on my rides. Flickers, too, for some reason-- you can recognize them by their white butts as they fly away.

That's one thing I haven't really talked about: the rides, and the routes that I'm on every day. I do try and explore as much of KW as I can on bike, but most of the time I'm going to and from work. Much of these rides are on quiet streets or trails (though some trails have only recently been reopened) and when you're on two wheels, you can take in the scenery a lot more.

Route secrets

If you need to move to and from north-east Waterloo, you move from embarrassment of cycling riches to awful choke points and back again. There is great cycling in the neighbourhoods around Bridge Street, north of University:

<<<< sorry guys, Google doesn't embed maps with the cycling layer turned on, because Bob returned late from lunch last Friday and didn't spend 5 minutes implementing that feature... please click the links to follow along. As for Google, they and I need to have a few words. >>>>

Snippets of trail, lots of cut-through paths (although not on Allenby Court), and cycling lanes on roads like Bridge and Davenport. Even the ward councilor, Diane Freeman, is an avid cyclist.
 
Unfortunately, you can't get there from here. Literally: if you don't have the intestinal fortitude to mix with speeding traffic-- or are willing to flaunt the rules and sensibility by biking a sidewalk perilously close to a low guardrail and a 30 foot drop to the expressway below-- this neighbourhood is entirely cut off from the rest of Waterloo. But we've been here before and we know the solution is: road-diet Lexington. Just waiting on staff and council to see the light.

Still: if you can stomach Lexington, the city is your oyster. Well, maybe not quite-- UW is a major high-traffic gap away (the Columbia/King mess), but you can get to Uptown and to Kitchener if you know where you're going. Dearborn Boulevard is your gateway off Lexington and away from the 80km/h traffic, and connects with the great trail system that is the Forwell Creek and Hillside Park. From here you can ride trails up to Manulife headquarters, over to Canadian Tire, or all the way down to University Avenue near a small street called Carter Avenue.

It's hard to get across University right now, but that will change in a year or two: reconstruction will add a refuge island here. And Carter leads you to Moses Springer Park and into the heart of the bike-navigable Lincoln neighbourhood.

Infill! Infill!

Last night I saw something that piqued my interest: a City of Waterloo planning map that shows a proposed trail extension from Lincoln Park across Weber to connect with a trail leading to Uptown, here at Mackay Crescent. Getting across Weber here is key. I hope discussions between city and region bear fruit.

If you can get across Weber right here (here's a hint: you can't. It's stupid.) then you have almost clear sailing all the way to Uptown Waterloo, the Laurel Trail, the Iron Horse, you name it. Otherwise, there are some options if you filter along Lincoln Ave and through the Sobeys plaza (pick up your groceries while you're there!) and then on down Devitt or Moore. Moore provides access to Duke, which is the best way to downtown Kitchener on a bike if you can't get to the Iron Horse... or it will be, until the Spur Trail is constructed.

(Do you sense a theme? A theme of being close to a great cycling network but for a few critical gaps? Talk to your councilors. Explain to them the wonder of infill. Tell them you're not willing to wait until the gaps get reconstructed.)

Of course, this also passes the Mount Hope cemetery, which is my stomping grounds (or... maybe a little less in the cemetery as near it.) From here you're on your own.

Alternatives

But if you want to make the same trip in a different way, you could try riding past the Canadian Tire, braving a short stretch of Weber and Columbia, and head down Regina. Not too bad, especially if you work the lights right. You still have to cross at Lexington though.

Or you could take a different plot and head down Bridge to Lancaster (possibly avoiding the roundabout by taking this dogleg). This is not pleasant cycling, as it's decades-old infrastructure with no cycling accommodation-- but the widths are generally good, and if you don't mind a brutal hill or two, you could do okay. Lancaster happens to lead right to Queen, which is a great gateway to Kitchener too. But it's a traffic lunatic asylum, so be warned.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that there's some great cycling in the City of Waterloo, especially on the east end. But to enjoy it, you have to deal with the fact that the City of Waterloo is in fact two cycling networks, disconnected by an expressway. Maybe this will be fixed soon, but in the meantime you should ask yourself if you really need to wait for that.

I can't. I have to be out there.

There's ducks, after all. And bunnies. And flickers.

See you on the trails.

North Waterloo Tidbits

The region has passed its staff recommendations to create proper cycling lanes for Bridge St. between Northfield and Lexington, including eliminating the southbound turn lane at Lexington.

The city appears to have passed the zoning changes requested for building a new plaza at Bridge and Northfield.

And today, while cycling up Davenport, I had a brief chat with a construction worker about the curious new pole they've installed... in the northbound lane. Traffic is, of course, being diverted around it. Turns out that this is the start of roundabout work at Davenport and Old Abbey. Which should fix the horror they made of the cycling lane there.

Edit: The Record's picked up on the pole oddity. The picture is hilarious.

Why Davenport is a good idea

I know Davenport Road pretty well. I used to live on Kingscourt, behind Conestoga Mall. You needed to have your wits about you on Davenport Road.

Davenport used to be a speedway. A twisty 1980s era 4-lane road, filled with obstacles like an overflowing Timmy's drivethrough (serving as a kind of multi-level symbolic reminder of how we're getting some pretty basic things in our life badly wrong), stopped left-turners waiting to get into the mall, and of course the cars who weave in between it all.

What it is now is being billed as Waterloo's "first complete street". Really, it's our first no-holds-barred Road Diet.

You've probably heard that term bandied about for a while now, it's been seeping into popular usage for a while. On the surface, it sounds like bald euphemism-- what is a road diet, then, but less road for cars to fit on?-- but road diets are a remarkable example of the non-intuitive nature of traffic. From less, you get more. Or at least, you get the same amount of car capacity, but you get more of other things: cycling lanes, pedestrian friendliness, safety, adherence to speed limits, visual attractiveness...

But don't take it from me. Here's Streetfilm's piece on Road Diets:



A 2-lane road with turn lanes, like new Davenport, typically faces opposition from people who think that it is going in the wrong direction when it comes to accommodating our growing traffic. But, there is data (such as Walkable's report [pdf]) which shows that road diets like this frequently maintain the amount of traffic capacity that the old road had, especially when the number of driveways and turning opportunities on the road are limited-- such as they are on Davenport.

The dieted road is slower. No question. But it's not congestion so much-- the pace of traffic self-limits better. Without an extra lane to allow passing, the pace is now set by the prudent driver. We're also getting better at designing roads that psychologically cause drivers to limit their speed. And the turn lanes still allow for good traffic flow at intersections-- the difference is intersections are no longer chicanes and obstacles in the middle of a long speedway.

So traffic is calmer, the opportunity for and severity of accidents is reduced, and the extra space can allow for cycling lanes, pedestrian refuges and plain old landscaping.

And still, initial reactions to Davenport reveal a lot of criticism and doubt. Even someone whose backyard has been driven into twice openly wishes that it was still four lanes. This underscores how intuition in urban design has really led us down the garden path-- and then caused us to dig up the garden path, replace it with a freeway, and wonder why the garden withered and died.

What road diets reveal to us in great clarity is the folly in optimizing for the car. Much of the last half-century has been based around the premise that what's good for the car is good for everyone, because everyone drives. Instead, the truth is that what's good for the car comes at the expense of just about everything else, and the incremental denial of spaces to anyone but the automobile-enabled ends up forcing everyone to use a car. Finally, when capacity for cars is reached, we end up with an urban form that punishes everyone, and with no easy fix available.

We need an urban form that enables car use, but does not optimize for it, especially on a road like Davenport which is not a major thoroughfare. 4-lane road capacity turns out to be only marginally better than a well-designed 2 lane road with proper turn facilities. That marginal improvement comes at the expense of usefulness for other modes, and of safety for all.

Oh, and hey! The new Davenport has Waterloo's first bike box! But that's a topic for another time...