Comments on: How the University of Waterloo fails its pedestrians

By: anon

anon — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:06:07 +0000

In Winter 2008, we received a major snowfall the Sunday prior to the March Break Open House. By Monday afternoon, there was a single foot-width path connecting the access road to Modern Languages and ENV Buildings and the interlocking brick path between those Buildings. At the time I was in a Health, Environment and Planning course and a guest lecturer (another prof) was giving us a quick introduction to accessibility planning.

My group had on a pair of goggles that changed depth perception, and we stumbled through that part of campus. By 5 pm (a day and a half after most snow had fallen) the path wasn’t any bigger, so I took the initiative to kick free a larger path.

By 6 pm, nothing had changed, so I grabbed a snow shovel from and went to get the job done myself, knowing there wasn’t going to be much done otherwise. The next morning, crews finally arrived to finish clearing a path at 11 AM, several hours into the day’s program, and not at all worried about how this would be viewed by prospective students and their families.

The Campus Master plan has provisions for, in conjunction with a way-finding system increased connectivity across campus. I pray that this means updating and resolving the hundreds of little problems with campus connectivity.

By: PeterM

PeterM — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:54:39 +0000

Great stuff, I remember my four years on campus, I kind of accepted most of this as a given. Seeing it here really reminds me of how nasty it can be. (That picture of westmount and university is darned dangerous, and I used it every day). One thing that always bugged me was snow shoveling. The sidewalks on university ave would never be shoveled in a timely way. 16-18 hours after snowfall was perfectly normal. It normally wasn’t shoveled on the weekends. I lived close to campus, and used university ave every day, and was always ticked to be trudging through a foot of day old snow, walking next to a parkinglot that was cleared of snow hours after it fell. Cut through the parking lot? Good luck with that! The darned little hills made it an absolute pain!

By: Free Refills

Free Refills — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:51:23 +0000

As a University of Michigan alum, I would often hear from Michigan State University folks who would disparage U-M since it “lacked a real campus” and was “spread out across a city.” I would always retort that Michigan State’s “beautiful campus” was only designed to be seen from a car. Who wants to spend half a day walking to and from class? Give me a more urban, walkable campus any day.

By: Jarek Piórkowski

Jarek Piórkowski — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:04:52 +0000

Don’t miss the ‘great’ crossing of University Ave by the tracks, to say nothing of the plaza as a whole.