KITCHENER - Changes to the way Kitchener designs streets that put pedestrians and cyclists first is "absolutely the right direction," says the city's director of transportation.

City councillors will vote Monday on whether to adopt "complete streets" guidelines aimed at slowing vehicles and making city streets safer and more comfortable for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users.

For the past 50 or so years, Kitchener's streets "were absolutely designed with an auto-centric feel in mind, not only to move traffic efficiently" but also to provide more space for cars to park and drive than is really needed, Barry Cronkite, Kitchener's director of transportation, said in an interview.

"We're providing a lot of space for the automobile, with little consideration at this point for other modes of transportation," he said.

The new guidelines call for narrower lanes, wider sidewalks and boulevards, street design that slows traffic, and separated bike lanes on busier roads.

The new approach is a significant change, but would in some ways reverts to the way streets were built before the Second World War. "It's almost dialing the clock back a little bit in time," Cronkite said.

But Cronkite cautions that the new guidelines, if approved, won't radically transform the city overnight. First, they affect only city streets, not the regional roads that carry most traffic. Second, they would be applied only to new roads (mostly in subdivisions) and road reconstructions. Typically, Kitchener rebuilds about six kilometres of road every year - a tiny fraction of Kitchener's 763 km of city streets.

Fears that the new approach could create congestion or make it hard for fire trucks or garbage trucks to get around are misplaced, he said - the experience in the city's older neighbourhoods, where speeds are slower and streets narrower, makes that clear. Limiting parking to one side of the street is more predictable for drivers than having to weave between cars parked on both sides, he noted.

Requests for traffic calming overwhelmingly come from newer subdivisions where the roads are wide - a clear sign that the current design isn't serving pedestrians or cyclists, Cronkite said.

Consultation for the new guidelines included some innovative approaches - in addition to the standard online survey and public meeting, the city held workshops at Trinity Village seniors' home and Wilson Avenue Public School, and invited comment from Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region, a group working to ensure inclusion for people with developmental disabilities

Those consultations yielded some differences in views - schoolkids like biking and called for more ways to slow cars down, while seniors said driving is still a necessity to get to farther destinations and said they were afraid of cyclists, both as pedestrians and as drivers.

But all three groups called for ways to make streets more of a place to enjoy rather then somewhere to move quickly through, with things like lots of trees, wider sidewalks, shorter crossing distances, more benches. Adding things like swings or art stations at bus stops would bring new life to the street and make waiting for buses more fun, students said.

But the idea of complete streets isn't popular with everyone, though 70 per cent of survey respondents approved of the proposed direction. For many people, what matters most is streets that make it quick and easy to drive through the city. Some named Ira Needles Boulevard and Fischer-Hallman Road - busy arterial roads that carry up to 40,000 cars and trucks a day - as examples of great streets.

If approved, complete street principles would be incorporated into the city's Development Manual.

cthompson@therecord.com

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