Margaret Avenue bike lanes

On Wednesday, June 16th, Ken Carmichael (Supervisor of Traffic and Parking Engineering-Transportation Planning at the City of Kitchener), attended our Neighbourhood Mobilization Alliance meeting at city hall. He told us about some plans for "traffic calming" on Margaret Avenue between Victoria and Guelph streets.

As a reminder, Margaret street looks like this between Wellington and Breithaupt, just before the bridge over the railway tracks. Residents have complained for many years about the excessive speeds of cars in that area.

The city is introducing two initiatives to slow down traffic. The first is that Margaret Street is being designated a bike lane so a bike path will be marked and parking will be more restricted. The city will eventually introduce "speed humps" along the street to slow traffic as well.

Ken stated that it is impossible to slow drivers who insist on driving poorly and too fast, but studies show that if you have more restricted parking, and if the bike lanes are drawn in, there is less space on the street for the cars. Therefore, the drivers slow down because they have to pay more attention to the markings. So over the next couple of years we hope some calm will come to this area of the city.