Reading Time: 5 minutes The city of Ottawa is planning to widen the Airport Parkway with money from Developer Charges. Not so fast. There is quite a bit of concern about widening a road next to an already money losing Light Rail. Is there an alternative?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Ottawa is a large place. We have a photo of my wife’s father standing in front of a row of brand new houses. The trees behind him look about 5 years old at the most. He is four years old and the neighborhood is called Old Ottawa South. ‘Old’ was likely added later as there was no New Ottawa South. Ottawa stopped at Billings Brickyards, now Billings Bridge Mall; Altavista didn’t exist. We are talking about the mid 1920’s. The automobile was just 40 years old. Amalgamation Through amalgamation Ottawa is now ridiculously large. Several small European countries fit together [Read more…]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Since 2012 BikeOttawa organises once a year a quick campaign to draw attention to bike lights. We usually do that in the first week after daylight saving (not savings) time. I remember in the first few years that tons of cyclists were cycling without a light but I have this anecdotal feeling that it is getting a lot better. Of course I still see people cycle on Bronson late at night without any type of light, but if you stand along the ‘big commute’ routes, I am impressed how many residents have lights on their bikes. you kind of need [Read more…]
Reading Time: 4 minutes This 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…]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Today, 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…]
Reading Time: 4 minutes A 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…]
Reading Time: 5 minutes So now what? Your mother-in-law gave you a gift certificate (or even cash in an envelope) for Christmas and you really don’t know what to buy because you have everything already. Here are three books related to cycling (or to the broader theme of a better city) for winter reading. All three books are written by Canadians: Tom Babin, who writes for the Calgary Herald; Charles Montgomery, a Vancouverite and our own Ottawa authors Craig Forcese and Nicole Laviolette, law professors at Ottawa U. 1 Frostbike – Tom Babin Tom interviewed me in September 2011 when I was speaking in Calgary [Read more…]
Reading Time: 5 minutes It must have been around 2010 when Joel Mulligan mulled over a beer at Pub Italia: “if we could only have a bit of Dutch bike infrastructure in Ottawa, so that people can experience what safe cycling is really about“. Few people around the table could envision that four years later, Churchill would be that ‘bit of Dutch bike infrastructure’. And not just five meters, but an entire avenue. Fifties design nearly put back in again For those who don’t know Churchill Ave, it was an old style 50’s era wide road, with some parking on both sides; a connector [Read more…]
Reading Time: 3 minutes On March 22 we are holding our third Spring.Bike.Ottawa event. The purpose is to get updates on local cycling. It turns out to be an event that is appreciated. We started the event because we felt no one had a good overview of all the bike initiatives going on in Ottawa. And there are a lot. There are many people working on cycling in Ottawa, often in the background. They are doing great things with little or no money. Spring.Bike.Ottawa brings those (mostly) volunteers together. We hold the event early in the year, to make people aware that cycling is [Read more…]
Reading Time: 3 minutes In all likelyhood, you have never heard of Velsen in the Netherlands. I have, but I have never been there. Today, I received a blog from BicycleDutch (written by Mark Wagenbuur) in my inbox. It is one of the few blogs I follow as it gives me a good picture of what is going on in the Netherlands. Contrary to popular belief, I am not often in the Netherlands. The last time I visited the Netherlands is already about 2 years ago and I have no plans to go there soon either. Usually I am not reblogging stuff that others [Read more…]
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