bike

Hayley Richardson – Telling Bicycle Stories

October 17, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 4 minutes Learn more about what’s happening with cycling – on the other side of North America AND in your backyard! On November 1, Citizens for Safe Cycling will hold its Annual General Meeting, with a speaker from the City of Bellevue, Washington (near Seattle), and updates from the local bicycle community. The first half of the evening, which will include booths from local organizations, speakers, and refreshments, is free and open to all. You can expect booths from Ecology Ottawa, Envirocentre, Bicycles for Humanity, Hintonberg Cycling Champions and Right Bike (the purple bikes rental concept that will start in Westboro-Wellington West [Read more…]

Halifax Revisited

October 12, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 6 minutes She is young, she is bright and she is an entrepreneur. Twenty four year old Sarah Craig decided to forego a government career in CO2 calculations (who can blame her?) and decided to start a bike rental shop on the board walk in Halifax. Really, how many people, fresh from university start a bike shop? I decided to visit Sarah on a crisp Friday afternoon. The place is not bigger than roughly a 150 ft2 but rents out 15 Townies, with helmets (mandatory for everyone in Nova Scotia). Sarah also has a collection of T-shirts, bells, claxons, magazines and alcohol [Read more…]

Spacing Ottawa: ‘the everyday cyclist”

September 22, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 5 minutes Spacing Ottawa contributor Allegra Newman organised an evening at the Alpha Soul Cafe in up and coming Hintonburg on September 21, 2011 with the theme “Everyday Cyclists”. Panelists were Colin Simpson, City of Ottawa Senior Project Manager, Transportation – Strategic Planning Unit; Kathleen Wilker, Community Cycling Advocate, Co-chair Hintonburg Cycling Champions and free lance writer, Schuyler Playford, Assistant Community Project Coordinator Causeway Work Centre and Ian Fraser, West Wellington BIA Cycling Committee. As I am an every day cyclist myself (although not always too loyal to cycling in winter), I thought I am going to listen in. We took the [Read more…]

A Bow to Calgary

September 17, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 6 minutes Last week I spent four days in Calgary. In terms of layout, there are many similarities with Ottawa: our Ottawa River (albeit a tad bigger) is Calgary’s Bow River, the Elbow River meandering from the south is our Rideau River. Ottawa has the Queensway, Calgary has its railway tracks running through down town. (I once spent a few days in the Fairmont Palliser and the rail cars barrelling right underneath the window kept me awake half the night). Calgary has a car free Stephen St, Ottawa has car free Sparks St. There is a big difference between the two streets [Read more…]

Visiting Ward 9’s bike infrastructure

August 30, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 3

Reading Time: 9 minutes Ottawa consists of much more than the usual suspects like Parliament Hill, the museums (musea), the Canal and the Byward Market. Not everyone who is visiting Ottawa will make it to places like Westboro, the Glebe, Old Ottawa South or up and coming Hintonburg, let alone making it all the way to a place like Nepean or Orleans, unless you have family there. Even most Ottawans don’t make it to the other side of the city usually. Before a number of municipalities merged into the current city of Ottawa, there was a place called Nepean. Mostly built up since the [Read more…]

Attractive New Low Impact Pavilion in Vincent Massey Park

August 22, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes Vincent Massey Park, across the Rideau River from Carleton University, North of Heron Road and West of Riverside Drive, is well known among immigrant groups, it appears, as often I see large numbers of East Asian immigrants barbecueing in the summer. The bike path along the river in Vincent Massey Park was closed for a while as the NCC has been widening the path. The NCC and the city didn’t really think of cyclists and simply closed the path, not realising the impact. Consequently, all of a sudden cyclists had to figure out another way around the construction site, which [Read more…]

Is Ottawa’s Bixi Bike Missing Its Target Group?

August 14, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 9

Reading Time: 6 minutes (See for a spring 2012 update at the bottom of this page). Since the Bixi bikes (Bixi bike is rental bike that you can pick up and leave at a number of unmanned fixed locations) were introduced in Ottawa on May 18th 2011, over 13,000 (13,187 to be precise) times a bike was taken out of one of the ten stations. There are one hundred bikes, divided over ten stations. De average time a Bixi was used is 85 minutes. 24% of the bixis is used in Gatineau versus 76% in Ottawa. That makes sense as there are seven stations [Read more…]

NCC Bike Sundays: 10 Great Summer Pics

August 1, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes For a North European, closing the road for people to cycle feels a bit odd; people simply cycle every day everywhere over there. As long as you have to close roads, you obviously have a (perceived) safety issue among the population. However, North Americans consider cycling still mostly a sport (although it is changing), which you do in an enclosed environment, like on track, in a hall, or in this case a closed circuit. Canada’s National Capital Commission has been closing a number of parkways (kind of beautified roads, with lots of landscaping to impress locals and foreign dignitaries alike) [Read more…]

The small outdoors: 10 patios on Laurier (and 2 bonus food trucks)

July 19, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 3 minutes At first glance, Laurier Ave in Ottawa might come across as a concrete jungle-like street with uninspiring buildings. But in the end, it’s the people who ‘make’ a street: there are a number of coffee places and restaurants with outdoor terraces. I went out at lunch time and found 12 places with a terrace to watch the world go by and see cyclists in particular. Watching the world go by It is quite fun to see that virtually every few minutes someone cycles by, usually very calmly. Added bonus, you can keep an eye on your bike if you are [Read more…]

Opening Laurier Bike Lane in style

July 10, 2011 Hans on the Bike - Ottawa, Canada 0

Reading Time: 4 minutes Approximately 150 people gathered on the hot Sunday afternoon of July 10th, 2011 to witness the opening of the Laurier Bike Lane, which runs through downtown Ottawa. This bike lane is the first one of its kind in downtown Ottawa, to accomodate cylists who are not yet comfortable sharing the road with the hectic downtown traffic. City staff and cycling advocates have been successfully joining forces over the last two years to establish the long awaited down town cycling improvement. The lane came out under budget and ahead of schedule so that it could be enjoyed in the summer. The City’s bike lane [Read more…]