Cycling

cycling in Ottawa

Not sure why I choose for red, I guess I was brainwashed by the many Dutch images I studied. Looking northbound.

Could Ottawa’s Percy Street Become a Bicycle Street?

August 1, 2017 Hansonthebike 1

Reading Time: 6 minutesPercy Street In the previous post, we read about the Dutch bicycle streets and the Dutch quest to design guide lines based on best practices. With the information under our belt we can take a look at Percy street in downtown Ottawa. Percy is a north-sound street that runs through residential areas. It is a desirable route for cycling in the west side of downtown because it crosses underneath the 417 Queensway highway, which runs east-west through downtown; it is mostly an elevated highway. North of the Queensway, Percy is a one way south bound street of about 1200 metres, [Read more…]

Bicycle Street in Utrecht, Netherlands in front of the Gerrit Rietveld huis. Note that the bike street still has a refuge too.

Bicycle Streets: A Next Step for Ottawa?

July 25, 2017 Hansonthebike 3

Reading Time: 7 minutesAs Ottawa sees the number of residents who bike increase, it is time to improve our existing infrastructure. The NCC pathways, built in the seventies, are becoming overcrowded by commuters, tourists and utilitarians alike and therefore the federal agency is planning to widen the paths likely starting with the ones that were flooded this spring. To give you an idea of numbers, June, despite being fairly rainy, saw 60,000 bike trips on each side of the canal. I was pleased to see that west of the Adawe bridge, the city slipped in an advisory lane, and there was no negative [Read more…]

National Peacekeeping monument. where the three routes meet in downtown Ottawa

Provincial Cycling Network: a Bucket of Paint for the Ottawa Region?

April 18, 2017 Hansonthebike 4

Reading Time: 3 minutesLast week at the Ontario Bike Summit, the Ontario Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sport and the Minister of Transportation announced the next step in developing an Ontario cycling network. The focus is very much on long distance tourism cycling in the province. The province is planning to fund part of the network from the carbon auction that generated hundreds of millions of dollars. Of that fund, $200 million is set aside for cycling. (Mind you: that same province set aside $ 100 million to widen the Queensway with one lane on both sides for a 3 km stretch) Serious money That is still pretty [Read more…]

A Closer Look at the Bronson Improvements

September 20, 2016 Hansonthebike 4

Reading Time: 5 minutesThe city got a lot of flak for the Booth Bridge Boondoggle and rightly so, as the design goes against all the modern road design principles. Big intersections, 4 lanes, no bike infrastructure, despite the connection to Quebec, the Zibi developments, the future Senators stadium and the Ottawa river pathways, even though there have been dire warnings from different sides years (!) before it was built. Once the opening came closer, the general public woke up and started to ask questions. The city scrambled a team together and a temporary provision for cycling was made. All you can do is roll [Read more…]

Cycling to the Quintessential Dutch Windmills

September 13, 2016 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 6 minutesNot far from Haarlem and Amsterdam, the Zaanse Schans is a bike-able destination. We checked out 17th century saw mills, old farms, Dutch skies, a ferry and passed a waste facility that looked like a luxury hotel.