Down the Merivale Road ~ W.W. Campbell
Reading Time: 6 minutesKilmorie house is close to Merivale Rd. Once the home of a Canadian Poet, it is now surrounded by low rise homes. The lot will be subdivided but the home remains.
Advocacy
The New Elgin Street. Can we do it?
Reading Time: 6 minutesToday, we compare a run of the mill street in Ottawa with the Witte de With Street make over in the Netherlands and see what we can learn from the Rotterdam.
Perfect Conditions for 5th Winter Bike Parade (incl. video)
Reading Time: 3 minutesCycling in winter is much more enjoyable than you’d think. Take a look.
Record Year for Laurier Bike Lane
Reading Time: 5 minutesLaurier Bike Lane now has four full years and five fall seasons of data. We are taking a look at some of the bike counter data and try to find a trend.
"A Great Ottawa Tradition"
Reading Time: 4 minutesThis year was Citizens for Safe Cycling’s 5th time that we organised “Lights on Bikes”, the brain child of Alex deVries, who figured we needed to organise something to get the word out on bike lights and safety. We realised that we need to use some kind of a ‘coat rack’ to hang the event on, which became the switch from Daylight Saving Time (not “Savings”) to the standard time (not winter time). Nancy Biggs came up with the name which has been a hit too. “My brother was over from Toronto to do a couple of bike rides. We cycled [Read more…]
Laurier Bike Lane's Missing Data: a Reconstruction
Reading Time: 3 minutesToday, we will take a look at some Laurier Bike Lane data, because there was an odd dip in May. The data are collected in six different locations on the lanes between Bronson and Elgin. The counters are connected to a metal loop in the ground, which detects your bike’s metal. Every time someone cycles over the loop, it is detected and the ride is stored in the counter’s memory. The data of two counters are submitted to a server at midnight, processed and put on line. The other data sets are collected on a regular basis in other ways. The data you can [Read more…]
Impressions of 2015 Tulips on Two Wheels
Reading Time: 4 minutes This year was already Citizens for Safe Cycling’s fourth Tulips on Two Wheels event in Ottawa. Every year around the time the 1 million tulips are blooming, we are out at the canal near Canal Ritz with our bike tune up station (managed by Cycle Salvation) and our information booth. Unfortunately, we get the muddiest spot along the entire canal. It is a spot that is used for truck parking during winterlude and it totally ruined. That’s why you hardly see any tulips in the pictures (only across the street). The event is a great opportunity to talk to cyclists who might [Read more…]
Seven fun mistakes in signs
Reading Time: 3 minutesI am the last one who claims my English is great. It is not my mother tongue. Spell checkers help a lot, but I tend to mix in Dutch grammar sometimes. You will often see Dutch people confusing ‘learn’ and ‘teach’ or ‘borrow’ and lend’ as the Dutch use one word for it. Prepositions Prepositions are always a challenge. Is is ‘on’ or ‘at’? Where does it go in the sentence? And it is ‘to mix in the ingredients’ and not ‘ to mix the ingredients in’. Why is is it big- bigger, but not handsome – handsomer? I still [Read more…]
Wayfinding Signs in Ottawa
Reading Time: 6 minuteswayfinding in Ottawa has never impressed me. I remember there used to be a sign to Hull, I think it was on Bronson, about a foot square, that was covered by a tree branch for years, until the name ‘Hull’ ceased to exist. I am also often amazed that directional signs are put at the intersection or after an actual exit, rather than 200 meters before the exit. The photo below is a perfect example. NCC wayfinding signs Now the City of Ottawa is building a bike network, you might have noticed wayfinding signs starting to pop up. The NCC has [Read more…]
Infographic: Cycling in Ottawa
Reading Time: 4 minutesA few years ago, I wrote -as president of our local bike advocacy group- a letter to City Council in which we mentioned that (I believe) 23,000 bike rides were counted on Laurier Bike Lane (at Metcalfe) between November 2011 and March 2012. These numbers were collected by in-ground bicycle counters. At the next council meeting (or perhaps Transportation Committee, I don’t remember), one councillor asked about these numbers; he refused to believe the numbers and city staff was tasked to come up with the numbers instead. Of course, we were using the same data source and city staff must have rolled [Read more…]