Reading Time: 3minutesLast 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…]
Reading Time: 4minutesDynes Road will get a make over as there is sewer work to be done. Much of the cycling infrastructure is usually put in place when the sewers have to be replaced. Main Street was an example of that. The road is open anyway, so this is a good reason to rebuild the street and these cost don’t eat into the cycling budget. So essentially we’ll get free Dutch style intersections. The residents at Dynes complained about speeding and part of the reason is that the road is very wide. (Mind you, it is drivers who speed, not roads). The part [Read more…]
Reading Time: 4minutesLast week, Karen and I were at a public information session for the reconstruction of Dynes Road off Prince of Wales Rd just north-west of Hog’s Back Falls. The road will be ripped up between summer 2017 and 2019, so the city brought the residents together to explain what the plan is. Poof, slip lanes gone There were drawings of the street on display with a cool new element, plus bike lanes and bike tracks. The slip lanes at Dynes and Prince of Wales are gone in the drawings, thus making the intersection a lot safer for everyone. The engineers and councillor [Read more…]
Reading Time: 2minutesAlthough it doesn’t rain that often when I want to bike, I do try to plan around a rain shower if possible when there is even a threat of rain. One of my best sources is the weather radar at the Environment Canada website. By estimating the speed of the incoming rain from the 7 images displayed, I can usually work around getting soaked. Rain sensors in the Netherlands are going to help getting you home dry. Rain sensors installed Netherlands’ cities installed rain sensors already a few years ago. When they detect rain, the computer adjusts traffic signals in [Read more…]
Reading Time: 7minutesWe took Angela for a trip through Ottawa, six years after she gave her first talk about cycling at the ACT conference. An inventory of new bike infrastructure.
Reading Time: 6minutesLast week, we started cycling to Amsterdam north and checked out some great places. This week we continue the trip along the waterfront.
Reading Time: 5minutesThe 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…]
