KITCHENER — Charlotte Armstrong doesn't drive, and would love to get out more on her bike. But most city streets "are just way too scary," she says.

The Kitchener resident was delighted to hear the city plans to install separated bike lanes — with rubber curbs and flexible posts separating cyclists from vehicles — along a five-kilometre stretch of Belmont Avenue and Queen's Boulevard.

"I'm afraid, but I will try this out," Armstrong said. "This is what I'm hoping will help me find the pathway to work."

Queen's Boulevard "is a tremendously hazardous road to try and bike on," said Blake Smith. "It's super-duper busy. Nobody goes the speed limit. There are parked cars, so you have to swerve around them."

Both Armstrong and Smith attended an open house on the new cycling lanes Tuesday at Victoria Park, and say they can't wait to try them. The city plans to install the new lanes along Belmont from Glasgow to Queen's at the end of July, and along Queen's from Belmont to West Heights Drive a month later. The lanes will be in for a year, so that city engineers can study the impact they had — on encouraging more cyclists, on slowing traffic, and so on.

The new bike infrastructure will cost about $430,000 to design and install, and will add important links between downtown Kitchener, the Iron Horse Trail, and the West Heights area, creating a connected cycling route between the downtown and several major destinations, including St. Mary's General Hospital — a major employer — three schools, a community centre and highrise apartments on the west side.

The cycling infrastructure pilot project "is one of the most extensive that we've done," said Barry Cronkite, Kitchener's director of transportation services.

The project takes advantage of two stretches of "overengineered" road — streets that are wider than they need to be to handle the traffic they get. Instead of two lanes of traffic in each direction, the project will reconfigure the road to have one lane of traffic each way, and a centre turning lane down the middle. Cyclists will have a separated lane on each side of the road.

One potentially controversial aspect of the project is that it will eliminate all on-street parking — about 250 spaces — along the five-kilometre stretch. But studies show that at the busiest times, no more than 10 per cent of those spaces were used.

The project will measure cycling and road traffic before and after, and will include winter plowing of the bike lanes, so the city can test how long it takes, and how much it costs, to plow separated bike lanes, and see whether winter maintenance attracts more cyclists. People will be able to comment at a second open house next spring, as well as in an online survey, and a report on the project will go to city council in fall 2020.

A similar project on Toronto's Bloor Street West saw the number of cyclists increase 44 per cent, Cronkite said.

Other visitors to the open house, which drew about 65 people, were more skeptical. Meg Slater has lived at Queen's and Belmont for 22 years, and says drivers speed down Queen's "like a bat out of hell." She's not convinced that a different street design will change driver behaviour, unless it's coupled with tougher enforcement and ticketing.

cthompson@therecord.com

Twitter: @ThompsonRecord

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