When Williamsville resident Kate Betts-Wilmott and her family moved to Kingston, Ont., five years ago, they chose the neighbourhood because it is pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly.
However, the city’s proposed plan to remove bike lanes along Princess Street between Regent and Division streets in the near future flies in the face of that.
“What they’ve taken is a set of adequate systems and instead, really made it a death-defying commute,” says Betts-Wilmott.
Last winter, the city provided details of a transportation study for the area outlining the plan to remove the bike lanes to prioritize expanding the sidewalks, and maintaining a travel lane in each direction for vehicles.
What it proposes instead is to develop Concession Street as an alternative bike route connecting to downtown.
But Betts-Wilmott says that’s not a safe alternative.
“Concession is full of slip lanes, so those little lanes that allow someone to avoid stopping at a red light,” she says.
“That prioritizes speed and anytime you prioritize speed, it’s really bad for cyclists.”
Williamsville district councillor Vincent Cinanni agrees, saying if the plan goes forward, the slip lanes would need to be removed.
“If they were to put bike lanes on Concession, I think they would really need to look at how traffic flows and finding ways to slow that corridor down,” he says.
“The slip lanes, I think, they would have to go.”
However, Cinanni also agrees with the study — that in order to achieve widening the sidewalks while still prioritizing transit, something has got to give.
“I would rather it have everything,” says Cinanni.
“But having seen all the iterations, I can see that it can’t.”
Cinanni says there are other options aside from Concession Street as an alternative, including Park Street to MacDonnell Street.
We are still years away from seeing the improvements come to fruition.
Which is plenty of time for concerned residents to make their voices heard, and for staff to get the plan right.