Cycling on Canada Day 2025 and an Award

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Last week, I received the Bruce Timmermans Award for cycling advocacy from the City of Ottawa.

That was a bit of a surprise to me as I won it before, albeit in 2011, a lifetime ago.

Bruce Timmermans (from Dutch descent) advocated in the 1980’s and 90’s for safer cycling in Ottawa. Sadly, he died too early (not in traffic fortunately). We rented a place in Ottawa in 1998 and Bruce just happened to live 6-7 houses away from us. I think I met him only once though as he passed away soon afterwards. After his death, I chatted with family members who invited me over into his house: he never really finished it on the inside, and his living room was a bicycle work shop, with tools, parts and tires everywhere. Now that is dedication.

Still, I appreciate that cycling advocacy keeps being awarded, even though we are not always friendly to the city. In the background though, many advocates, just like housing advocates and anti poverty advocates, have good relationships with councillors and city staff. So what motivated the city to give the awards this year?

Individual award

Hans Moor is the former leader (actually president – HM) of Bike Ottawa and a previous Bruce Timmermans Cycling Awards winner. He was recognized for his continuing cycling advocacy. His cycling blog (hansonthebike.com) advocates for safer conditions for active transportation, with posts on topics ranging from best practices for infrastructure design to cycling into old age. He has developed a series of routes for Ottawa cyclists based on his extensive experience as a tour guide. The routes are available on his website and have helped many people discover the region by bike. He has been influential in elevating public interest about biking and walking around Merivale Road, highlighting the diversity of restaurants in this area and elevating the ways in which it can be seen as an active transportation centre.

Helping with Bikes community award

Helping with Bikes is a division of Helping with Furniture and aims to provide client families with functional bikes as an affordable means of transportation, exercise and recreation. Since its founding in 2014, a small, dedicated team of volunteers has refurbished and distributed more than 3,000 bikes to those who might not otherwise be able to afford the joy and utility of owning one. Donated bikes are fully refurbished by a team of experienced mechanics, ensuring all the bikes people receive are in good working order.

I know I am preaching to the converted, but it is absolutely necessary that, with the projected growth in the city, more trips should happen by bike. You will never hear me saying that everyone should bike all the time in all seasons, but every bike trip made is not a car trip. Just because the sheer cost of building roads, I believe Ottawa residents should have safe cycling options so that they have a choice how they travel around. Road construction cost, I learned from city staff, is growing much faster than inflation and frankly, given the amounts involved, unsustainable I expect.

Cycling is growing

Many people do bike already fortunately. The numbers keep growing. In the city’s own Origin – Destination research over the decades, the bicycle modal share (the number of people who use a bike out of every 100 people, went up from 2.5% to nearly 5% since 1995. It is still minimal, but it is growth. Interestingly, we see the shift starting when the city seriously started to build safer, more connecting cycling infrastructure since 2010. Before 2010, the line is pretty flat at 2.5%, but around 2010, the line starts to go up.

Neighbourhood cycling

Did you know that many of all trips in Ottawa are shorter than 5 km in length? That is an ideal distance to cover by bike, somewhere around 20 minutes. That short distance is why I strongly advocate for neighbourhood cycling. This is the easiest to accomplish. It is well known that people start to look for other transportation options than cycling once a trip is longer than 8 km; you have to get back too, so that is already 16 kilometers. Flat suburban places like Barrhaven and Stittsville are at the most 5 – 6 kilometers across and should be cycling heavens. Yet, bike use is low there according to the Census data from 2021.

As we all know, negotiating arterials is often a pain in the ‘axle’ in your bike trip. This is why the city builds more and more protected intersections. At least you have the option to do a two step left turn, rather than having to cross three lanes with your kids in order to get to a left turning lane. And you are more visible when positioning yourself at a protected intersection.

Lots of improvements

In the years I have been advocating, we have seen bike counters arriving, so that we can actually collect data, bike traffic signals, advanced greens for cycling, bike boxes, protected intersections, and many more connections such as the Flora foot bridge, the Rideau River bridge at Carleton, the Odawe bridge, the Trillium pathway, the O’Connor and McKenzie bike lanes, the Main Street, Byron, Churchill, Scott and Albert and Montreal Road bike tracks, the Max Keeping bridge and a lot more. A little known regulation now requires complete streets when new roads are built and even when roads are rebuilt (after a sewer replacement). Of course there is always that provision “if possible”.

Collective effort of the community

None of this was obviously because of me: it is the collective effort of many people writing to councillors, people speaking at the Infrastructure Committee and asking questions at open houses, the addition of new and younger city staff and the gradual increase of councillors who understand that cycling is part of the city’s overall infrastructure puzzle.

Stay positive

Despite being annoyed and irritated sometimes with the slow progress, the desire at the City to either do it perfect or not at all and increasingly puzzled by provincial politics, I remain generally positive and I foresee cycling will keep growing, simply because of the extremely low cost of infrastructure and the low cost of owning and maintaining a bicycle. It just makes so much financial sense to bike to nearby places. I just had our car tires (R17 cheapies) and oil replaced: $994. Then I had brakes and calipers replaced: $ 2300. Luckily we don’t drive much so those cost can be spread out over many years. But it was a tough pill to swallow anyway. The carbon rebate paid for our annual gas consumption in the past, but that is gone now.

Let’s Bike Ottawa

Yesterday the month long “Let’s Bike Ottawa’ event closed and already the total number of kilometers covered vastly surpassed last years. Last year’s total was just over 400,000 km (a distance to the moon roughly). This year, we’ll end up with over 590,000 km. If you participated, you still have a few days to update your last km. The 65 mm of rain in June vs. the 150 mm last year may have influenced that much higher number. I cycled 275 km in June, mostly to the library, grocery stores, friends, a few short tours along the rivers, nothing heroic. Most trips were in the 5-10 km range.

Maps for Canada Day 2025

As we are celebrating Canada Day today, I am hoping to get out for a bike ride, which we often do. Looking at the weather forecasts, it can go all directions: one calls for a dry day, another for a chance of rain and a thunderstorm.

If you plan to bike downtown, be aware some roads are closed, also in the Byward market. The city is actively promoting taking a bike and/or free transit to LeBreton and downtown but the city map is not helpful: in good Ottawa fashion, it is confusing. I highly recommend not even thinking of trying to get downtown by car. You will be miserable, stuck in traffic, sitting in your vehicle on Dalhousie or Mackenzie Ave trying in vain to get into town on your day off.

The map below shows that Kichi Sibi Mikan is closed for traffic (likely also for cycling, even though the red line says ‘closed to motorvehicles‘) . Last year that was not very well handled. This year there is a detour mentioned on the map, but if there are no signs on the road and the pathway, cycle towards downtown from the west end, cross the parkway at Lemieux Island southbound towards the roundabout and eventually turn left just before the LRT tracks overhead so that you end up ‘behind’ Bayview station. If you take a close look on the map below, you’ll noticed a blue dotted line leaving the parkway following Bayview Station road and veer east north of Scott and Albert.

 

Note that the Byward Market announces road closures from 7 am until midnight, while the City says from 9 am until 11:30 pm

If you don’t feel like going to the Byward Market or LeBreton Flats, then you might want to check out some of the bike routes I designed over the years, with GPX tracks you can download. Some of them are not hitting the busy areas and are pleasant inner urban routes along rivers and through greenspaces, mostly on pathways. As always, be aware of other traffic and when in doubt, let other traffic go first.

I also just read that many museums in Ottawa are free on Canada Day. A good place to escape the heat for a few hours. No access to a bike? Check with Escape Bicycle Tours on Sparks St.

Happy Canada Day!