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Originally Posted by rocketphish
Paved shoulders would only serve to move the bikes a foot or so further away from the cars, probably encouraging more dangerous passing than occurs now.
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That kind of depends on the width of the paved shoulder/climbing lane. Make it something like 2.5 m wide and you can get two cyclists climbing side-by-side within the lane.
Cyclists aren't holding up car traffic going downhill so no lanes are needed there, not on the flatter parts. Just put the extra width on the hills where you get lots of cyclists trying to pass other cyclists.
Another option is to widen the roads by about 2 m overall but leave the lane widths the same as present and instead create a 2 m paved median that motorists can make use of for overtaking. That way instead of having a 1 m lane of questionable value the road instead has an extra 2 m for passing that can be used in both directions.
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I was envisioning that the NCC could provide more paved bicycle paths as a means of getting bikes off the existing narrow roads.
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They're not all that narrow - they're actually pretty good. Compare it to the mountain roads that the Tour de France is using for example, and then consider that these roads see the very same cyclists training on them in advance of the Tour itself without the roads being closed.
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The NCC certainly knows how to build pathways. So, build a parallel bike-only pathway beside the parkway... it wouldn't cost very much in the grand scheme of things. It could even veer off into the woods for a more natural experience.
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The NCC might know how to build pathways better than the City, but that's not much of an achievement. The basic problem I have is the very term of "pathway". They end up being a paved path rather than a small scale road designed for use by vehicles.
Will the path get right-of-way over any roads it crosses or will it get a little stop sign regardless of relative traffic? Worse still will it cross the road within a pedestrian crosswalk? Are they going to impose some kind of idiotic 20 km/h speed limit? Will pedestrians be allowed on it - where they'll probably walk with the traffic rather than against it like they're supposed to on any other road - and will cyclists be expected to ring their bells all the time whenever pedestrians are around? I can just imagine the handwringing letters-to-the-editor already.
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And these paths would not have to tolerate 70 km/h descents. I can say from experience that as well as being quite exhilarating, cycling downhill at excessive speeds is also quite dangerous. But equally importantly, it's also illegal (the park speed limits are only 50 or 60 km/h, aren't they?). Slowing down the cyclists would be a good idea in general, for everybody's safety. This could be achieved by providing a narrower, curvier bikeway route.
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Do you have any idea of the sort of cyclists who are currently using the park? Lots of cyclists head up there in groups for various kinds of training. They're not going to take narrow curvy bikeways. That would be more dangerous than now. They need to be able to overtake other cyclists with ease going uphill (as well as any others, like roller bladers and roller skiers and even pedestrians since you're not going to keep them off this path in all likelihood) and to be able to go safely downhill without heavy braking. That means curves and grades similar to the existing road and enough width for two cyclists in each direction. For your idea to have any chance of working in practice, you would effectively be turning the parkway corridors into three-lane roads with a bit of a verge between a two-lane carriageway and a one-lane-wide bicycle carriageway.
And while your concern about the danger of cycling downhill at speed is touching, it's not based on any kind of reality. I've been down a hill at close to 90 km/h at Foymount on the Opeongo Road and it really isn't all that dangerous - the gyroscopic effect actually makes you more stable than at lower speeds. There are not too many incidents involving cyclists at speed in the park where the speed of the cyclist is an issue (i.e. idiot motorists overtaking at speed is far more of a problem). Anyway, I chose 70 km/h because I know the limit is 60 km/h but all roads have a design speed that is higher than the speed limit.
Overall, I just don't get the impression that you've thought this through all that much and/or are ignorant of the various requirements and the way things are likely to work in practice.
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For those cyclists bent on downhill speed, there's always Sunday mornings, from mid-May to early September, when the Gatineau, Champlain and Fortune parkways are closed to vehicular traffic for the express purpose of providing a non-car environment for cyclists and inline-skaters/roller skiers.
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And what guarantee would there be that Sunday mornings would continue to be closed to motor vehicles (it's false to claim the parkways are closed to "vehicular traffic" since there's plenty of that going on on Sundays) once your paths are built?
The happy motoring lobby will be demanding that the roads be opened up to cars at all times once these paths exist.
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Or do your cycling outside the park.
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Ahh yes... the cyclists have already been largely pushed into the hills so nothing like taking away one of the few places where cyclists actually feel fairly comfortable and which is within reasonable reach of the city without requiring a car to get there.