Category Archives: News

Iron Horse Trail move, and going forward

Cycling, News June 13, 2013 Michael Druker 1 Comment

Monday’s Waterloo City Council meeting had many delegations (as well as written correspondence) speaking passionately against moving the Iron Horse Trail between Park and Caroline Streets to give Mady Corp. an easier parcel of land for development. Overwhelmingly, citizens lucidly explained the issues in the new trail alignment — two walls, poor sightlines at the 90-degree turn, a crossing of a parking garage entrance, and others — as well as in the development itself. Nevertheless, all opposed delegations made it clear that they support intensification in this area — but that they expect better, especially if major concessions are granted.

In our presentation, Mike Boos explained that aspects of the new alignment — the proposed 2.0m width for biking (separate from the walking section), the path crossing a driveway, and the 90-degree turn — are at odds with the City’s own Transportation Master Plan and the draft of the Ontario Traffic Manual Book 18 on cycling facilities (PDF). A representative from Mady actually responded that they would certainly increase the cycling width to 3.0m, adding that they were not aware of the needs of cyclists.

After a meeting with some heated questions and discussion, Waterloo City Council approved the development re-zoning application and the trade of the Iron Horse Trail, in a 4:2 vote, with Councillors Melissa Durrell, Mark Whaley, Scott Witmer, and Mayor Brenda Halloran in favour, and Councillors Karen Scian and Diane Freeman opposed.

Roger Suffling, a professor of planning who presented on behalf of the Easy Riders Bicycle Club, has since weighed in with an excellent column on the bigger picture of the planning process. The editorial board of the Waterloo Chronicle has criticized the precedent the decision sets, and that of the Waterloo Region Record has pointed out that creative alternatives for that site should have been given due consideration much earlier.

In our experience and that of others who chose to present, the general trail-using public became aware of this proposal either through the last minute media coverage, or only after the decision was made. The only outreach to general users of the trail was a standard development application sign on the site. Neither were alternatives for development or routing at any point presented for public or Council consideration. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that there is a protest planned (see also).

Going forward, it’s clear there will be and needs to be substantial public involvement in the design of the corridor between Park and Caroline Streets in the new alignment. But with staff and Council saying that part of their interest was in addressing issues with the current trail alignment, there is also still the possibility for the City of Waterloo to consult with the trail-using public on creating additional alignments for cyclists through that general area that would avoid the issues we and others have pointed out in the new section.

What you need to know about 155 Uptown and the Iron Horse Trail

Cycling, Light Rail, News June 1, 2013 Michael Druker 2 Comments

We’ve written before about the 155 Uptown development proposal, which is a 19-storey condo tower plan predicated on the City of Waterloo agreeing to a land swap to move a portion of the Iron Horse Trail. Worryingly, the staff report indicates that the City of Waterloo considers the Iron Horse Trail to be a purely recreational facility. And while there have been a couple of neighbourhood meetings and committee consultation, the general trail-using public has not been consulted about this plan, and most are probably not even aware.

Now is the time to speak up (or send in your written comments), as the proposal is coming up for formal approvals at two meetings on Monday, June 10. Here’s what you need to know:

Planning documents for the development, as well as the staff report and recommendation.

Disposition of the Iron Horse Trail property – formal meeting for the land swap decision on June 10.

Zoning by-law amendment – formal public meeting for development approval, on June 10.

Contact for City Council. Call or email councillors with your thoughts, in addition to providing comments through the formal meetings linked above.

We believe that land in close proximity to LRT stations should indeed be intensified, but with less parking, more active streetscapes, and more sensitivity to the surrounding transportation context than the current 155 Uptown plan. The City of Waterloo should not be making exceptions (and trading off public assets) to facilitate merely “transit-adjacent development”, and instead should focus on making actually transit-oriented development.

Supporting an evidence-based approach to cycling infrastructure

Cycling, News April 10, 2013 Chris Klein 1 Comment

As many readers may be aware, Kitchener is proceeding with a plan to introduce sharrows to King Street in downtown Kitchener, along with new bike racks, public events, and other measures designed to make promote cycling and improve the understanding of sharing the road among cyclists and motorists.

Image courtesy City of Saskatoon

TriTAG supports the proposals in the Cycling Facilities and Downtown Branding report – the City staff responsible should be commended with such forward-thinking initiatives and thorough analysis. We would like to speak in particular about the plan to add sharrows to King Street in downtown Kitchener, and the critical importance of measuring the effect of this improvement.

In 2010, TriTAG saw an opportunity to measure the effects of new cycling lanes and markers in the city of Guelph. Over the next two years, we were able to gather evidence that showed: More citizens chose to cycle, and fewer rode on the sidewalk. This report has been of great use to the City of Guelph – all from a few volunteers taking time off of work to sit in brisk early morning temperatures at the side of the road with clipboards. If we’d had the right resources to allocate to further study, we would have been able to accomplish even more.

The “Kitchener Cycling Branding and Downtown Cycling Facilities” report draws from the experience of cities like San Francisco, Miami Beach, Seattle, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Experience there suggests that sharrows can work well where space is at a premium and traffic speed is low – but we lack study of local examples. In light of this, Kitchener staff, in collaboration with TriTAG and the Kitchener Cycling Advisory Committee, have developed a plan to measure the effect of sharrows in the downtown. We commend council’s support of the study – to assign a few hours of staff and volunteer time to measure the impact of this modest but important investment – because we believe that the sharrows approved for King Street can have a big impact – and that the city should have the proof to back up the success of their initiative.

Why stop here? We would love to see Kitchener take a more rigorous approach to measuring cycling traffic. Plans to gauge the effect of new cycling infrastructure over time ought to be routine. Our city needs to understand cause and effect if we’re going to live up to the cycling master plan’s vision of doubling cycling trips every three to five years. Learning what works is important – without measuring, we cannot truly say what works and what doesn’t.

As this report shows, we can learn from the experiences of other cities; with the addition of better measurement on our part, not only can we learn from our own experiences as well, but we can provide Kitchener’s hard data approach to measurement as a gold standard when other communities come calling to ask how we built a more efficient and complete cycling network.

Choosing a better land-use future

News April 8, 2013 Mike Boos

Transportation choice is inextricably linked to land use. When cities sprawl, the ability for citizens to freely choose their means of transportation diminishes as the number of trips requiring a car increases. If everyday destinations like home, work, retail, and leisure are located near each other however, it becomes easier to choose to walk, bike, or take transit between them. In addition, these kinds of places are much less costly to connect to each other with streets and transit than sprawled areas.

As renowned urban planner Brent Toderian writes, “the best transportation plan is a great land-use plan.”

In 2009, Waterloo Regional Council approved its Official Plan, a document outlining the shape of growth for our Region over the next 20 years. The plan encourages development to be mixed-use and to take place in already built-up areas, and limits sprawl over farmland by establishing a firm countryside line.

This plan has been appealed by a group of private developers who have benefited from previous sprawl-permitting policies. Earlier this year, the Ontario Municipal Board made a ruling in favour of these developers, requiring that the Region provide for more than 10 times as much development on new land (i.e. sprawl) than what was in its Official Plan. Essentially, the ruling forces Waterloo Region to provide farmland for another 20 years of full-speed sprawl, on the basis that sprawl is what the last 20 years looked like.

Waterloo Regional Council understands the threat this is to the Region and its ability to plan its own future, and has voted unanimously to appeal this decision in court. TriTAG applauds Waterloo Region for defending its progressive and responsible plan that would lead to greater transportation choice and quality of life for its citizens. It is vital that we citizens, through our elected government (rather than a handful of private developers), be in control of our own region’s destiny.

To learn more about the Region’s Official Plan and the Ontario Municipal Board appeal, visit smartgrowthwaterloo.ca

iXpress loves you and wants you to be happy

Proposed 2013 GRT Service Improvements

Buses, News, TriTAG February 22, 2013 Mike Boos 3 Comments

The Region of Waterloo’s Planning and Works agenda has come out for next Tuesday, including proposed 2013 service improvements in Waterloo and the service planning implications of cuts to existing transit service in the 2013 budget.

Public consultations on the service changes will be held at various locations in Waterloo and Kitchener between March 18 and 26.

We are very pleased to see a movement towards a grid system. A trade-off is present here however: it will take longer for customers within the neighbourhoods bordering Bridge Street to reach their bus stop. Once they get to a bus though, it will take much less time for them to reach their destination. We believe this change represents a net gain for GRT users and residents in general. [1] (more…)

Taxi licenses shouldn’t be further restricted

News December 10, 2012 Branden Wesseling 6 Comments

Below is a letter I sent to Regional Council on behalf of TriTAG. See the December 11 agenda of the Licensing and Retail Committee for the referenced report.

Dear Council,

We were dismayed to learn of the staff recommendation at Licensing and Retail Committee for the taxi-cab license ratio of 1:1650 to be reduced to 1:1850. This is based on an industry request and would result in the issuance of no new taxi licenses for approximately the next 10 years based on current population projections for Waterloo Region. It would be a setback for the urbanization and transportation goals of the Region of Waterloo.

The recommendation follows a request from the Taxi Association, which claims their request is the result of current taxi providers experiencing decreasing revenues, a situation which they curiously expect will worsen as the population continues to rise. They justify this concern by citing “newer communities such as Deer Ridge, Eastbridge, and Doon South [which] have 2 or 3 cars in the driveways,” concluding that “these areas do not use taxi service very much.”

However, thanks to the reurbanization policy in Waterloo Region, the next 100,000 residents to this community will live much more urban lifestyles than current residents in the Region do now. In fact, the Region is already making excellent progress towards its urbanization and intensification targets. Taxis are a vital part of urban transport and are important in ensuring that more urban and less car-dependent lifestyles are easy and enjoyable for residents. Restricting access to taxis at this point in time runs counter to the rest of the Region’s urbanization goals. Simply put, the next 100,000 residents to this community will be more likely – not less – to require taxi services than the 500,000 residents before them.

In order to support the Region’s urbanization goals, it is important to ensure that the barriers to entry into the taxi market are not prohibitive to new service providers, ones who will seek to compete in our rapidly urbanizing community by delivering innovations and improvements in service. Conversely, decreasing the per-capita number of taxis on the road only serves to restrict customer choice, and only benefits those who currently hold licenses by making those licenses an artificially high-priced commodity for those who are eager to enter the market. Reducing the taxi-cab ratios serves a rent-seeking interest of existing taxi companies, but does nothing to benefit the residents of this Region.

More taxis means greater competition, which leads to better innovation, and ultimately more and better choices for residents. The Tri-Cities Transport Action Group asks that the Region of Waterloo Council should disregard the Taxi Association’s request to reduce the taxi-cab ratio, in the interest of increasing, rather than limiting, transportation choice, and in order to continue to support its own densification and urbanization goals.

Consultations for University iXpress and 2013 Service Changes

Buses, News, Transit November 7, 2012 Duncan Clemens 6 Comments

In the upcoming weeks, Grand River Transit will be hosting Public Consultations for the Proposed 2013 Transit Service Improvement Plan. This includes the implementation of an express bus route running from the west end of Waterloo from the Boardwalk to the Northeast Corner of Waterloo at RIM Park via University Ave. Also being discussed will be route adjustments in Kitchener and Waterloo set to be implemented in September 2013. Maps will also be provided so you will be able to draw your preferred routes along the corridor.

Consultations will be held at the following dates and locations:

Thursday, November 15
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Kitchener Waterloo Bilingual School
Gymnasium
600 Erb St. W., Waterloo

Tuesday, November 20
12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
University of Waterloo
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre
Room 1301
200 University Ave. W., Waterloo

Wednesday, November 21
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church
Chapel
245 Lexington Rd., Waterloo

Thursday, November 22
12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Wilfrid Laurier University
Fred Nichols Campus Centre
Concourse
75 University Ave. W., Waterloo

You may also view these events on TriTAG’s Public Events Calendar and copy them to your own calendar.

You can preview the service changes beginning on page 117 of this Planning and Works Agenda [PDF]

[UPDATE] More information about the consultations can be found here on the GRT Site

Highway 7 Alternatives

Intercity Transit, News, Other Cities, TriTAG August 24, 2012 Duncan Clemens 2 Comments

Update: With work on Highway 7 expected to begin in 2015, there appears to be little chance of a change in plans for the road corridor. However, your support is still needed to ensure transit connections are prioritized between Waterloo Region, Guelph, and the rest of the GTA, including two-way all-day GO train service. Contact your representatives today.

With the upcoming Kitchener-Waterloo by-election, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has pledged to construct an 18km grade separated 4-lane freeway. This 18km roadway will be placed along a new 100m wide right-of-way to the north of the existing highway, include a new crossing of the Grand River and include 6 interchanges. Of particular interest is the modification of the existing Wellington Street interchange with the Conestoga Parkway into a 4-level interchange with high-speed direct flyover ramps set to be a quarter of the cost of this project.

Image of the planned Highway 7 route taken from a presentation made to Regional council in 2011

However, is the construction of a highway at an unknown cost (>400 Million according this presentation) best way to meet travel needs on this corridor? TriTAG’s position is that before a new highway corridor is constructed between Kitchener and Guelph, less invasive approaches to this issue involving transit need to be investigated.

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Focus on helmets ignores more important cycling measures

Cycling, News July 12, 2012 Mike Boos 3 Comments

This column first appeared in the Kitchener Post on June 21.

It was inevitable. The expert panel even predicted it. The media’s response to the provincial coroner’s Cycling Death Review released in June has been to focus on just one of the fourteen recommendations – namely, that Ontario investigate implementing a mandatory helmet law for cyclists of all ages. This review studied the deaths of 129 people on bicycles in Ontario from 2006-2010, to determine the leading causes of cycling-related fatalities and how they might be prevented.

The helmet law recommendation, and the ensuing media coverage, does disservice to the otherwise excellent report which declares that all cycling-related deaths are preventable. It’s not that wearing a helmet isn’t a good idea (it can be), but requiring one has unintended consequences, as even some members of the coroner’s expert panel point out in the report. Places like Australia that have implemented mandatory helmet laws have subsequently observed dramatic decreases in the number of cyclists, often with a negative impact on safety outcomes. One of the most well-understood factors in cyclist welfare is safety in numbers. This becomes much more difficult to achieve when barriers to cycling have been raised. This also leads to less healthy lifestyles; as Dr. Thomas J. DeMarco writes in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “helmet laws save a few brains but destroy many hearts.”

(Photo: aiisuki via Flickr)

The Dutch have a cycling fatality rate that is less than half the rate we have here in Canada, despite the fact that almost no one wears helmets there. What’s their secret to safe cycling? An abundance of protected cycling infrastructure can take you anywhere and makes cruising on your bike as convenient as driving your car. Strong laws keep motorists responsible for keeping an eye out for cyclists and giving them adequate space. Safe cycling education is integrated into primary school, which most children travel to via bicycle. All this was part of a deliberate strategy to protect cyclists and make the Netherlands more resilient to fluctuating oil prices. Their success in encouraging 30% of all trips to be made by bicycle comes from actually preventing collisions, not by imagining that collisions have to be inevitable and that the best defence is a piece of foam and plastic.

Provincial action on eleven of the fourteen recommendations from the coroner’s review would nudge us closer to the safer Dutch model. These include a ‘complete streets’ strategy that would require roads to be designed to give pedestrians and cyclists equal consideration as well as development of an Ontario Cycling Plan. Traffic and municipal laws should be clarified to make laws concerning cycling easier to enforce, hopefully to include actual consequences for negligent driving. A long-overdue one-metre passing law is proposed that would obligate motorists to respect the space around cyclists. Education at schools and at all levels about cycling safely and inclusion of road sharing in driver training is also recommended. These steps would put Ontario on the road (or is it perhaps a complete street?) to a safer cycling future.

Let’s not repeat the failed Australian experiment with mandatory helmet laws or allow the helmet debate to sidetrack more effective measures. Instead, let’s help our provincial and municipal leaders implement the recommendations that will actually make a difference in creating safer streets and lead to more healthy and sustainable transportation.

Mike Boos is a member of the Tri-cities Transport Action Group (TriTAG) who still wears a helmet when he rides his bike, mostly because he thinks it makes his hair look better in the morning. His loving wife disagrees. Follow him on Twitter at @mikeboos

Cycling Death Review – Summary of Recommendations

Cycling, News, Other Cities June 26, 2012 Duncan Clemens

The Ontario Coroner’s Report on Cycling Deaths has sparked much reaction in the media lately, in particular surrounding the proposition of imposing a mandatory helmet law on cyclists. While this review is definitely worth a read, we feel that the helmet law in particular has overshadowed the rest and has stolen the attention of media to the detriment of the rest of the report. More on this in a later post.

With the exception of that one recommendation, the rest need serious consideration by all levels of government; in particular the implementation of a complete streets approach to road design, minimum passing distance for bicycles, and increased focus on educating drivers on how to share road space with people who ride bicycles.

The full report can be found here.

For those that don’t have time to look though the full report here is a summary of the report’s recommendations, read on…

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