Waterloo's Great Cycling Gulf

For some years, I have been saying that we have some pretty good cycling routes in Waterloo Region, but they are too disconnected. I've been mulling a question: How do you best show the gaps in our cycling network that need attention?

To answer this question, you must define our cycling network. For instance: while I know some cyclists will brave the major arterial roads such as King, Weber, Northfield, University, and so on, I would not include the portions of those roads that don't provide any cycling infrastructure as part of my cycling network. And in fact, I go to great lengths to avoid them as unpleasant and too dangerous. In general, casual and new cyclists will also do this, unless they have no choice. A lack of alternatives may keep someone from becoming a cyclist at all.

On the other hand, parts of this city that aren't "officially" cycling routes are, in fact, very suitable for cycling-- most of our minor side streets and neighbourhoods are calm enough to be welcoming to cyclists.

I've played a bit with Google Maps, learning how to use its javascript API to visually sift through geographic information. I've focused on the City of Waterloo-- after all, Waterloo (the City) has a silver ranking for cycling friendliness and also where I do most of my commute and utility cycling, despite living just over the border in Kitchener.

I haven't worked out how to get this kind of javascript querying of Google Maps to embed nicely in Blogger, but that's okay. In the end I took information out of two maps and combined them:

• A map highlighting all minor "local" roads (on the generous assumption that they are bike-friendly enough for casual riders, even without cycling infrastructure)
• A map using Google's "Bicycling Layer" (which excludes any road-- major or minor-- without cycling infrastructure)

The result is below. I recommend you click through to see the image in all its high-res glory:



Even without zooming in, there should be one thing that's abundantly clear. Do you see it? Viciously cutting an uninterrupted swath across the entire northern corner of the city?

It's Waterloo's biggest cycling problem. It's the Great Conestoga Parkway Chasm. Like the Amazon River, the Parkway snakes its way through our city, and you take your life in your hands to ford it.

By excluding from my map anything that a casual cyclist would reject, I can reveal in stark relief just how big a problem this is for cyclists. In Waterloo, every crossing of the Parkway is an arterial road. None of them have cycling infrastructure. And they look like this:

Northfield Dr.


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King St. N


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Lexington


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University


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Enough to send your sense of self-preservation into a tizzy, and make you think about leaving two wheels behind and taking four.

Two observations to make. One: none of these routes are the kind you'd want your child biking on. And two: Lexington is the least bad of a very bad lot.

As it stands, we have a completely disconnected cycling network. For a city priding itself on its move towards complete streets, this should be Number One on its cycling improvement agenda. Fortunately, providing some small solution to this problem does appear to be on the city's radar.

With the proposed Lexington upgrade, we go from completely disconnected to one imperfect and tenuous connection across the Parkway Gulf. A step in the right direction. It must happen, as soon as possible: the Gulf is a major impediment to the adoption of cycling by young and old.

But it must also be followed by other crossing points for cyclists and pedestrians. I've been over each of these monstrous crossings on foot, and they range from unpleasant to horrifying. I can tell you what Northfield Drive is like, in January after dark as the wind and snow drives down and the speeding headlights are everywhere. I've used the Gulf and Giant River metaphors already, but for pedestrians the Parkway is also a wall.

Dear City of Waterloo council, should you read this: please remember what I've said when the Lexington improvements come before you.

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...

A cyclist's take on Lexington upgrades

By any standards, cyclists in Waterloo should be pleased that Lexington is getting attention right now. Though, cyclists won't be entirely pleased with the proposed alternatives. How you feel will depend a lot on how you perceive the proverbial half-empty, half-filled cup.

Four alternatives were on display at the PIC session on Lexington Drive tonight. One was a "long-term" preferred plan, and unless the City of Waterloo suddenly realizes it left $7 million in its other pair of jeans, it won't happen for 5-7 years.

Three short-term plans were shown. Their budget is much more modest, closer to $300,000, and one of them will be underway next year if it gets council approval. They are compromises, trying to build a decent cycling and pedestrian connection between Weber and Davenport.

One alternative, a multi-use trail on the south side of Lexington from Weber up to the bridge, was already mostly out of the running. It's a two horse race between two other options.

Alternative 2: North-side Multi-use Trail to Lexington Ct., cycling lanes and "Modified Road Diet" from Lexington Ct. to Davenport

Here, Lexington remains 4 lanes until Lexington Court, at the top of the hill. There, it moves to a 3-lane road diet configuration with bike lanes. Along the 4-lane section a multi-use trail is available. At the Lexington intersection, the trail ends and a crossing to the eastbound bike lane is provided, with a pedestrian refuge island.

Alternative 3(a): North-side Multi-use Trail to the edge of the Highway 85 bridge, cycling lanes, 2 east-bound and 1 westbound lane across bridge to Davenport

In this option, Lexington remains 4 lanes up until the bridge. From Davenport to the west side of the bridge, there is only one lane for westbound traffic. This gives room for bike lanes, which terminate after the bridge. Westbound cyclists move over from the cycling lane onto the trail, while eastbound cyclists would come to the end of the trail and would have to wait to cross over to their bike lane. There is no room for a pedestrian refuge here.

I'm not really happy with either of these options, though both represent an improvement from the status quo. I challenged the representatives on a number of points:

1. Why not cycling lanes all the way through?

Their answer: That is the "long term" plan which requires widening of Lexington and is not expected to be supported due to cost currently. Outlook for the long term plan: 5-7 years.

2. Why not carry the multi-use trail past the bridge?

Their answer: Engineering and drainage issues complicate changing the bridge's surface configuration. Politics as well: Lexington is the city's, the bridge requires going to the MTO.

(I got the impression that anything beyond repainting the bridge's lanes would be a tough sell because of the MTO.)

3. Terminating the trail at the bridge will result in a lot of cyclists crossing on the sidewalk. Potentially very dangerous given the height of the guardrails.

They did not have a good answer for this. Though they did point out that cyclists do this now, which is true.

4. Why no pedestrian refuge on 3(a) like on 2?

Their answer: This can only be done at the intersection where the turn lane shadow exists.

(Not sure I buy this.)

Overall, I had a slight preference for alternative 2, the road diet option: it provides a better crossing point at an existing intersection with the refuge island, and reduces the amount of cyclists who will shortcut on the sidewalk (or worse, in the oncoming bike lane). I'd also really like to see the effect of even this limited road diet.

I had one constructive suggestion for this option: terminate the westbound cycling lane before the Lexington Ct. intersection and provide another ramp there for westbound transfer from bike lane to trail and to connecting paths into the subdivision... and extend the trail to meet that point (leaving the other crossing and bikelane unchanged.) This suggestion was well-received.

Not clear which option will be recommended. One person told me 3(a) was preferred currently but another said that 2 was the leader going into this meeting.

Overall, the possibility that even these imperfect solutions could be acted on next year is something that makes me guardedly optimistic. The reconfiguration really is to the benefit of cyclists and no one else, and even if it isn't ideal, a good plan now is better than waiting for a better plan 7 years hence. And Lexington is the key crossing point for cyclists over Highway 85. Either enhancement would be welcome to me.

What do you think?

Battle Won, Whither the War?

n Wednesday, Erin and I gave away our Ignite tickets because we knew that if we went, our hearts wouldn't be in it, and our eyes would be glued to our phones watching the Twitter feed out of Regional Council.

So, instead, we gave away our tickets and walked down to Regional Council, to watch a little bit of history. And we got that: we got the long, drawn out speeches, the numbing due process, the anticlimatic transition from looking-good to foregone-conclusion to it's-passed, and we had a wonderful time!

Now, it is two days later, LRT is still half a decade away, and it's time get back to our regularly scheduled lives.

Or is it?

I think it's safe to say that I've discovered a passion for a certain set of urban issues. Having taken an increasingly public stand on this major issue-- letters to the local newspaper, letters to our councilors, an opinion blog that's drawn a little attention and even stepping up in front of council to have my say-- it's nice to see this particular battle won and it's nice to relax a little. But I don't want to disengage.

So, I have a passion for... what? Urban planning? Transit? What aspect of this LRT issue drew me out of my shell so effectively, that will drive my future motivation?

The issues of how people move around our city are what interest me the most, but that describes the "what" and not the "why". I think the reason why these issues engage me is that I have a vision for the kind of place I want to live.

In this vision, destinations are nearby and people move freely. "Nearby" doesn't mean everything is up the block, but rather that you can get anywhere you need to go conveniently without assistance or planning. Being able to do this without using a car is critically important: cars have their uses and, but they are expensive and they take away from our freedom more than the freedom they give: I never feel more unencumbered than when I leave my car behind.

I would ask you to think about that for a moment. A car usually allows you to get to your destination quicker and more conveniently than any other mode of transportation, but in doing so you are so shackled to the car that you can't just go somewhere else without it. You park the car, and in doing so, you enter into a contractual obligation to return to that spot, for it is the only way you can leave.

You are also never free from the concern about what happens to your car. It could be stolen or damaged, or it could be ticketed. If you've traveled with passengers, you are probably responsible for their return as well. You can't have a drink without worrying whether it inhibits your driving ability. You usually can't leave your car parked somewhere overnight. So taking a car defines your schedule, your responsibilities, and your behaviour.

It's interesting that most people experience a sense of freedom when they get their first car, but that is often because they deal with inadequate transit, or cities that have sprawled because of car use, to the point that you can't interact with it the way you want without a car.

So to me, if you must have a car to get to your destination, you cannot move freely. Nor is anything nearby , because you live on an island where the sea can only be traversed by your car. Granted, the trip may be short, unless your car is broken or the wife has it or there's no parking or gosh traffic sure is heavy at rush hour or you have no license, in which case your destination is effectively unreachable.

When it comes to the freedom of moving around this city without a car, we really end up with only a subset of our urban area where this is possible. Transit does cover most of our city, but it's designed to provide a minimal level of service to a maximum amount of people for minimum cost. And moving away from that is going to take a long time-- LRT will not solve it in and of itself, any more than the stud frames of your house help keep the snow and wind out on their own. LRT is meant to massively reduce resistance to movement along its route, extending the area that people can tolerably reach, be it by LRT alone or by some combination of train with bus, bike and walking. And because of the way we are laid out as a city, LRT provides capacity in the zone where car-free movement will build, and build, and build. It does, however, need its supporting network of express and neighbourhood buses.

But I digress. Months of LRT proselytizing takes its toll and the LRT debate has seen a lot of points taken out of context.

I see Waterloo Region becoming an area where enough of the cities become accessible to car-free movement, and as a result, sustain a critical mass of car-free life. And that has secondary benefits: urban form becomes driven by needs that are not based on the car, and evolves to better suit people instead. Everyone, not just the automobiled elite, enjoys an independence of movement. Demand may make housing more expensive, which means more apartments and less detached homes, but people enjoy a better lifestyle because they spend much less on simply getting from one island to another.

And it forces people to deal with others face to face. A car and a suburban home allows us to abstract away the entire world, and when we rage on the road, it's because we don't perceive other drivers as real human beings. I'm certain this promotes a worldview that puts self ahead of everything, no matter the cost.

Finally, without question, a car dependent place is ugly. The infrastructure and land use patterns that support the car is physically repulsive to me.

So I see reduced car dependence as a way to transforming the environment around me. I wouldn't call myself an environmentalist though-- I haven't even touched upon air quality and health and all that jazz. I've been happier in places with worse air than KW (as unlikely as it sounds)-- downtown Toronto, where I had all the freedom that a metropass and a subway station around the corner provides, or Hong Kong, where as a teenager I could cross the city on my own for virtually nothing. The freedom of those times is indescribable. And certainly, those are metropolises, and Waterloo Region is not... but then, building a suitable transit system and changing our places to benefit non-automobile users are steps to take on the way to our becoming a major city, not things that must wait until we are.

So the things that help our environment edge away from its old, car-dependent form into a more human-friendly one, those are what drive me.

Confessions of a blogger

I had the very unique privilege of hearing the previous post read out loud by Mike Farwell on 570 News today (podcast link here). Mike approached me on Twitter last night asking if he could borrow parts of it. It was a surprise to hear him read it verbatim and credit it on air!

So, now my confessions:

1. I laboriously thumb-typed the whole damn thing on my phone while watching hockey and assuring my partner in Loonage, Erin, that I was "literally almost done" at least three times. Welcome to the creative process! Perhaps it's true that being forced to slow down results in a better end product.

2. I'm really regretting, as the readership numbers are climbing, that I didn't finish the LRT primer whose first two parts I wrote two months ago. It feels like failing to keep your house clean when all your friends drop over unexpected.

Wow, what a day! Thanks Mike, and thanks to the other retweeters. It's a funny feeling, when you strike a chord. It resonates.

Reflections on the eve

(Late edit: Mike Farwell of 570 News did me the inestimable honour of asking to use parts of this post as an introduction to his broadcast as a guest host of the Gary Doyle show. Turns out, he liked it so much he read almost all of it on the air! If you'd like the "audiobook" version of this post, visit this link and listen to the start of the podcast.)

It's a good time to take a moment and reflect on the remarkable local developments in the LRT story before Wednesday's vote. The last nine months or so have been transformational, whether I consider the community or myself.

Prior to the leadup into last October's municipal election, LRT was not an issue. The public consisted of the very few who knew and supported the proposal, the very few who opposed it, and the vast middle who was quietly apathetic. But something happened on the way to the polling date... the opposition to rapid transit got their message out.

And in the absence of any other voice, the very simple message-- This is risky! Disruptive! Expensive!-- became almost viral.

I don't question that local politicians got an earful at the door. Especially if you consider the kind of filtering mechanism is in place when you go door-knocking through low-density neighbourhoods, and the ease with which a cost-and-risk narrative finds traction. Still, we didn't see any massive shift in council or mayoral membership. The discontent vocal minority hadn't been large enough to define a council mandate, but boy oh boy did they get noticed.

And so, council reacted. Bringing in a BRT reevaluation became a political necessity. Staff had to engage in "value engineering" and despite a significant pricetag reduction, they hurt the optics of that achievement by building in inflation (I think to protect a cost-contingent federal contribution.) Optics were also in play when staff released almost a dozen LRT alternatives, and just one BRT option.

Anti-LRT media had a field day. Their advantage is the perceived safety of the status quo and the superficial simplicity of their message, if your audience doesn't take the time to research their own opinion.

But in the background, in the deepest, darkest depths of twitter, and facebook, and on newly minted blogs (like this one!), something was starting to change. Initially we had been frustrated and disbelieving at hidebound reactionaries who seemed to be awfully confused or dissembling in their criticism. Now, we were starting to worry that maybe it would work...

Realization set in, in myself, in others... we would have to be heard. TriTAG had started, but the silent supporters who approved of their effort started to clue in that they couldn't sit on the sidelines.

I think there are dozens of us who have gone from having an opinion to being very vocal with it. I have a hard time thinking that when this issue dies down again, that we all will clam down again. LRT has galvanized civic engagement (both for and against, to be sure.) Whether it passes or fails, I hope that this is a watershed moment for Waterloo region's twenty- and thirty-somethings.

Wednesday's vote is not so far away. And I'm starting to think we may see LRT move ahead after all. Opponents claim that they're being railroaded (heh) by councilors whose minds were made up, but I don't think that's it. Most of council knows this is right because despite the naysaying and magnification of flaws, the case for LRT is very strong. But they needed to hear it from enough constituents. In the absence of our reluctant voices, some would shelve their better judgement in the face of a one-way public sentiment.

But even so, we don't know what will happen on Wednesday yet, and we can't forget the twists and curveballs that groups like T4ST and reporters like Outhit and Taylor have contributed, and how very close they came to defining our reality.

After last Saturday's rally, Jean Haalboom, one of the few supporting councilors willing to stand up for rapid transit and LRT, said to a few of us that we can't just drop this issue on Thursday if this vote passes. We have to keep on it. 2014's municipal vote could become a last-gasp money-burning cancellation movement if we go silent again after the immediate fight is won.

Most of us support LRT because we're thinking about the future, right? Well, it's time we take the long view. LRT doesn't get delivered if and when Council votes yes. In the years to come, we need to shepherd it home.

Spur Line Trail initial meeting

(Oh thank god I'm not talking about LRT for once.)

I attended the initial meeting for the proposed Spur Line multi-use trail tonight. Interesting experience. The thrust of the meeting was to get the major vision, issues, and details from the public on the table so that they can be considered in detail.



The Spur Line trail's study area runs along the rail spur from King St. South in Uptown Waterloo, to Ahrens St. West in Kitchener:


View Spur Line study area in a larger map

The Region wants to put in a multi-use (pedestrian, cycling, etc.) trail next to the rails along this section, as there is already an ad-hoc dirt trail in place, formed over the decades by the many users of this area.


The reassuring part was that most people there seemed to genuinely want to see this trail go through, as it would be a valuable link in our trail network. I share this opinion, as I live within a short stroll of the trail near its middle, and use it to access Uptown Waterloo frequently. Today I even used the trail in the other direction, which led me most of the way to Regional Headquarters, where the meeting was held!

Still, there were many issues raised, and there are some interests that are in conflict. Lighting and safety concerns of users on one hand, against the light pollution and noise and privacy worries of abutting landowners on the other. And complexities abound even on issues like this: it was raised that all-night lighting could give only the illusion of late night safety.

I think some of the most interesting twists involve the rail line itself, and I heard a lot of conflicting opinion:

• The Region owns the spur, but CN operates it and GEXR uses it. (If you live in Waterloo near the rail line, you probably know the slow chemical train that comes through a few times a week.) Planners are assuming that it will remain in use.
• The City of Waterloo's long term goal is to see this line shut down.
• The lease could be up as soon as 2014, or maybe it's 5 years.
• Closing the line entirely may be practically impossible due to some process where you have to show that no one wants to operate on the line.
• Closing the line entirely through renegotiation is in the Region's interest if LRT goes forward, as through Waterloo Park and northward it would save the project a ton of money.

And to further confound things, a gentleman at our table personally wanted to see this part of the spur used for LRT, practical considerations such as suitability of location aside.

I also learned more of a (harmless) derailment of the chemical train not long ago, caused (ostensibly) by Len's Mill's practice of shoveling their snow onto the rails. Also, Len's Mill parking appears to encroach on the Spur land itself, as does the paved surface of a number of other businesses. A lot of people are in for a surprise.

The Spur land is theoretically 20 metres wide for most of its length, which means that there should be room for the 6 metre "train envelope" and the 4-5m needed for the trail. In places this looks like a challenge, but overgrowth and encroachment shrink the apparent space. Still, I think it's safe to assume that a lot of property owners are making informal use of space they don't own, and this will need to be resolved. I'm betting that a number of misplaced fences may get ripped out, to the dismay of the nearby owners.

Another twist: widening and realignment of Weber St. But that part appears to be well in hand, with widening plans proceeding with the trail in mind. A regional rep described the intent to provide crossing assistance in the form of an pedestrian island at the point of trail crossing.



Still, over all the attendees were positive. More than one stated that their desire to see this become a proper trail stretches back decades. There are complications with the LRT project's potential impact on the rail corridor in general, and the sheer ludicrousness that we still have a train full of ammonia and sulphuric acid trundling through the Waterloo core, but the rough outline could see something ready for construction as early as 2012. Wouldn't that be something?

Edit: One important detail. Price was briefly mentioned. The ballpark number was $1.8-2 million dollars. But it's highly dependent on the design proposal and the engineering needs. Funding is "earmarked" but not approved yet. The usual possibilities about sponsorship and private partnership were bandied about. Not much real information here. (On the other hand, it's just a trail. It's 0.25% of the cost of LRT ack I mentioned LRT I think it won't be a big deal.)