Lights last piece of city streetscape phase 1
With a flick of the switch, King Street in UpTown Waterloo is transformed
With a flick of the switch, it was done. Well, about halfway.
The final piece of the first portion of the UpTown Waterloo streetscape puzzle was put into place on Saturday, as multicoloured lighting structures were turned on.
“It’s great. I think it’s turned out the way we intended,” said Phil Hewitson, the City of Waterloo’s manager of active transportation.
The first portion of the $11million regional and city project runs from the Spur Line — just north of Willis Way — to Bridgeport Road. The project includes segregated bicycle lanes, wider sidewalks, as well as customizable multicoloured lighting structures around the trees along King Street.
The long-awaited road paint showing cycling lanes is now complete, as well.
Once the project is completely finished and continued north to Central Street, there will be 57 lighting structures, at a total value of $659,843. Fifty-two per cent of those costs were covered by the UpTown Waterloo BIA, 16 per cent by the Main Street Revitalization Grant, and the remaining 32 per cent was covered by the City of Waterloo.
Hewitson said the goal with the lights is to create a “destination.”
“Our goal was to make it a destination and a place where people want to come,” said Hewitson. “It’s not just a path through … we want it to become a destination.”
During the design phase, it was determined that the former street lights were in dire need of replacement. It was suggested that more creative lighting could create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.
The lights are currently on a demo cycle of sorts, but they will be changed to correspond with different events, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. The city is currently working on a protocol that will determine the future use of the lights.
“The options are almost infinite,” said Hewitson.
The project is considered a success, but it didn’t come without issues. The project, which closed the street to vehicular traffic for nearly all of 2017, was intended to be complete that year. But construction delays dragged out the work to just last week, when the finishing touches were completed.
Hewitson said that next year, when phase two of the project is completed, the city may not be as ambitious with the timeline.
“We’ve learned that working on an old street like King, we’re bound to find surprises,” said Hewitson.
The design of the cycling lanes has also drawn the ire of some cyclists, who are calling for bollards, or physical barriers, to be installed between the road and the segregated bike lanes.
According to Hewitson, the Region of Waterloo has committed to monitoring the road, now that all the appropriate paint and signage is in place, to see if there is an issue with the design or if more public education is required.
“From there, it will decide what the future steps are,” said Hewitson.