The City is hosting an “open house” on Tuesday (Nov 28, 5.30pm onwards ) to show their plans for the future Albert and Slater Streets between Empress (the Good Companions) and Waller (Rideau Centre, UOttawa U). Here are some things … Continue reading West Side Transportation Cornucopia, part viii – Albert-Slater alert
Let’s look at that confusing stretch of road between Bayview Avenue and City Centre Avenue. Legally known as Albert Street, many folks persist in calling it Scott Street (which only runs west of Bayview). It’s a bleak and uninviting bit … Continue reading West Side Transportation Cornucopia, part vi – Bayview Station overpass
When the Ottawa Humane Society left Champagne Avenue there was some sort of contractual agreement they had to offer the land to the city. For parkland. Nothing said the city had to buy it. So they didn’t. And as a … Continue reading City sleeps while mystery bridge decays
The new Bayview Station on the Confederation Line will be built up high on the new bridge in the same place as the old transitway bridge. It will have a curbside entry from Albert Street at the east end of … Continue reading Underpass at Bayview Station
In the previous three stories I’ve tried to review what is planned, what some of the tradeoffs were, what the consequences area, and slip in just a teensey tiny wee bit of my opinion. So what would Eric do if faced with the same starting situation, of the City insisting its Western LRT had to go down the parkway space; and the NCC insisting that people using transit is incompatible with their revised greenspace plan? (note I am not considering other completely different route options). The physical plan My goal going into the conflict would be to keep rail on … Continue reading Westward Ho ! (part iv) in which Fantasies come to the fore …
Churchill Avenue running north from Carling Avenue towards Westboro is being rebuilt today as a complete street. In addition to the regular car / truck traffic lanes on the street, there will be concrete walks and at the same level as the walkway, a cycle track. A cycle track differs from a bike lane, which is a painted zone on the street just off to the side of the car traffic. Road traffic can readily intrude into the bike lane (hello FedEx). The cycle track is separated from other vehicular traffic by a curb and buffer zone. The opening … Continue reading Churchill Cycle Track takes shape
The application of the complete streets format to the south side of Scott seems worthwhile, as outlined in the previous article. The north side is not so obviously so. The picture above is pretty much an ideal situation, that is far nicer than could actually appear on the ground. Planners leave out a lot of details, like turn lanes, that wipe out a bunch of those trees in the boulevard, replacing them with asphalt. Nonetheless, check it out. Scott is on the left, running westward, the new LRT is in the trench. The same general scheme has been applied … Continue reading More thinking, not so sure its better
above: elderly gent attempts to give directions to city engineers who will shortly zoom off – but in what direction? The section of Albert Street that runs through LeBreton Flats is up for reconstruction starting this year. Total reconstruction, as in deep sewers, new watermains, new pavement and curbs. But the wiring won’t be buried that is a cost imposed on suburban areas not in central Ottawa. What will be the changes? Well, we don’t know for sure. The contract is being given to the Rideau Transit Group while the project is in the design stage, with more unknowns … Continue reading Albert Street reconstruction – Back to the Future?
The saga of the amazing perambulating Bayview Station is nearing completion. Recall that the station has been proposed in various scales, sizes, and locations. Well, the final plan is available exclusively to readers here. Bayview Station is back to being “on the structure” of the transitway bridge over the O-Train cut (yes, I know, the O-train isn’t in a cut, it’s on the level, it’s the road that is elevated, but such is our road-focussed society that the road becomes the normal level, and the flat becomes the hole…). The new station is in the same style as the majority of other proposed LRT stations. … Continue reading Bayview Station (final)
The City has been sporadically doing up a CDP (Community Design Plan) (which is a plan of dubious effectiveness under the Official Plan) for the O-Train corridor running from Bayview Station to Carling Avenue. Residents frequently ascribe its tardiness to a desire on the part of the City to see all the developable land purchased and rezoned before the plan is drawn up. In that way, the city won’t have to continually amend it. The City is committed to having CDPs done for all the stations along the OLRT. Having seen some of the in-progress ones I’d have to say they are better than nothing. At least they … Continue reading Sim-City model: Bayview-carling CDP
Okay, so it’s not really a “bike path”, the City doesn’t have any of those. We have MUPs, or Multi User Paths, which are shared by cyclists, dog walkers, parents with wailers, grannies with yappers, kids alone, etc. (It makes an interesting contrast: on roads, cyclists are told to play nicely with cars, buses, and tractor-trailers going 70km; off road, cyclists are sent to play with various pedestrian folks). I’m on the PAC (public advisory committee) for the O-Train path that will eventually run from the Ottawa River pathways south to Dow’s Lake. The City will construct the section from Bayview Station to Somerset (or maybe … Continue reading Planning the O-Train bike path
Readers may recall the brief brou-ha-ha in late June and early July, when the gate at the north end of Preston street was unexpectedly closed and locked. You can read about it here: http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/popular-bike-and-ped-route-locked-shut/#comments (when you get to the link, scroll up a bit to read the post, and down a bit to see the commentary). See also http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Shortcut+river+locked/5038541/story.html To recap, there is a paved bit of ‘closed’ road running north from Preston and Albert to a legal crossing of the transitway and then connections to the Ottawa River pathway network. It is popular with people walking to work, cycling, walking … Continue reading NCC closes popular cycling link after promising to keep it open
Some days on the west side of town are just peachy. Other days are a tad … dull. Depressing, even. Someone had enough time and energy to attack this Ginkgo tree in Plouffe Park: Meanwhile, over on Albert Street, where a half-assed multi-user path runs along the north side of the road, these have appeared scattered all along the path: Some of the posts are steel, like the one shown. Others are chunky 4×4 posts, all about 10′ high. I think the city buys one size of post, digs any depth hole, plants said post, then cuts it off at … Continue reading Dullsville
Councilor Katherine Hobbs is in the news for asking the City to examine developing the air rights over the west side part of the transitway/LRT line. I have a bunch of mutually contradictory thoughts on this. 1. The City should sell air rights to help pay for the transitway. Taxpayers are forking out a bundle of money for a transit line, we can recoup some of that expenditure by selling prime access to the most-accessible locations in the city. Otherwise, many of the development benefits go to the builders on adjacent lands. In some cases, these are private developers; in the case … Continue reading Air rights over the transitway/LRT
This post was originally written for Spacing Ottawa, www.spacingottawa.ca, and is reprinted here in case you are so negligent you do not subscribe to that site. You should have read it there! Spacing deals with geography across Canada; Spacing Ottawa deals with geography in Ottawa. WSA, of course, is a smaller focus on the neighborhoods on the west side of the downtown. But it’s all geography! There is some new content at the bottom of the post. ________________________ As an urban society, we have to shift our focus away from exclusively serving motor vehicles as the norm, and towards serving people, regardless … Continue reading Get Lost
Last Saturday, readers who also listen to the CBC awoke to a real nightmare. My dulcet tones were on the morning news, talking to Laurie Fagin about the lack of markings on the multi-user path (MUP) that runs along the north side of Scott Street and Albert Street.” Is it a bike path?” was the theme of the story. (It’s OK, you can listen to the radio today, it is Eric-free). Long time readers may recall that last May or June I reported that the City decided to paint a yellow line down the path to clearly indicate that it is … Continue reading BikeWest
The Bayview Station is quite complex to describe compared to Tunney’s or Hurdman. Basically, it is a long thin platform built atop an earthen embankment, pretty much where the bus shelters are now. But rather than have sloping pedestrian paths connect to the O-train platform about 16′ lower down, under the overpasses, the City proposes to build an escalator connection at the west end of the new platform that takes users directly down to the O-Train platform. This is a great development for users that transfer. What complicates the Bayview Station is that it is in the middle of an … Continue reading LRT Stations: (part iii) Bayview Station
Tunney’s Pasture is the interm western end of the initial LRT system. At Tunney’s, riders will transfer from bus rapid transit on the transitway to LRT to go through the downtown and then on to Blair Road in the East. Tunney’s is the second largest employment node in the City, and will triple in size over the next few decades. At some point the LRT service will extend west of Tunney’s to Lincoln Fields and then out to College Square. The new LRT station will replace the existing bus station at Tunney’s, down in the cut. The train track will extend a few meters west … Continue reading LRT Stations Revealled (part ii) Tunney’s Pasture
The picture below shows the current Bayview Station. It is simply a bus shelter on a hill in the middle of a field. It’s been that way since 2001, and while not ideal, it does function. The City is currently designing its transit stations for the new LRT network. For the first few years of the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel (DOTT) process, they had very elaborate station design for Bayview. It was a long elevated structure with east-west trains on top, and underneath was a second set of platforms for the successor to the north-south LRT that would someday replace the O-Train. Until that … Continue reading Bus shelters vs a station for Bayview
This is a post I wrote for Spacing Ottawa earlier this week. I repeat it in case you managed to miss it at that site. It was subsequently picked up on the national spacing network, as our problems with sidewalks are common throughout Canada: Sidewalks are installed by the City as an after thought. They are simply glued to the side of the curb on the assumption that if the road geometry is good for cars, it’s perfect for pedestrians. There is little consideration given to pedestrian origin or desires. And certainly no thought is wasted considering the pedestrian experience when actually using … Continue reading Sidewalk spacing
Timo Perala spoke at the CFSC agm on Tuesday evening. One point he made about cycling infrastructure in Oulu, Finland, got me thinking again about how cycling infrastructure should be regarded. In Copenhagen, cycling tracks are adjacent the curb, with parking lanes out closer to the traffic lanes. Cyclists cross intersections in two stages, like pedestrians, rather than in one left-turn movement like cars. This is the model Bedard liked after his trip to Copenhagen, and I earlier blogged about how I thought Vivi Chi liked this one too as it can be implemented consistently throughout an urban area. Although how she could fit this onto the freshly … Continue reading Cycling routes – part of roads? or sidewalks? or all on their own?
The City is considering a number of options for a segregated bike lane in the downtown. Here’s part i of the Laurier Option. Continue reading Laurier Segregated Bike Lane, part i
The very name crossWALK is pedestrian oriented. Carleton U has a neat crosswalk that handles cyclists and pedestrians and motorists very well, all in one neat package. Can we have more of these, please? Continue reading Bicycle Crosswalks
Here is a stop-light pitch for candidates for City Councillor, a one-line cycling policy. Continue reading The stop-light pitch
The following pictures were taken on the cycling path along Vassar Ave in Cambridge (Boston) MA. Vassar goes through the MIT campus, and recent streetscaping had been done to narrow the road, add boulevard trees, and a bike path which was heavily used when I viewed it on several occasions. In the picture below, it transitions from on-road to being at the same grade as the sidewalk, set back from the street by a row of trees. Despite being in front of the most prestigous engineering school in the world, there is a puddle in the path. The path was … Continue reading Boston cycle path
