I hope bech32 is more widely implemented ASAP, including on other cryptocurrencies, especially ones based on BTC addressing. Having a human-readable prefix that clearly differentiates between various crypto assets is a great boost to usability as Bitcoin adoption grows to less technically savvy people.
Thanks to the 0.16 Bitcoin Core update, bech32 might become more popular in short period of time. It isn't default type of address, though. If they forced people to use them then the adaptation would be much faster but there are many services and exchanges which still don't support sending to such addresses. It looks like they don't really care about fees.
I really like your attitude to Bitcoin Core's actions. Most people would like to push a lot of upgrades as soon as possible. It causes a lot of technical problems and tension in the community. Since scalability problem seems to be solved for now (assuming that Lightning Network will succeed soon), maybe it's time for making transactions more private? Although, I'm afraid that this could lead to ban of Bitcoin in more countries.