living in ottawa

12 Ads with Bikes: How Bikes Sneak Into Main Stream Advertising

November 13, 2014 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 4 minutesRemember the time that cycling was associated with either racing or  enviro-types who cycled out of principle? Those bearded types in home knit sweaters and goat wool socks, with safety vests, mirrors, reflective straps, and a milk crate duct-taped to the bike? That time when banks, consultants, coffee shops and drug stores had no desire to be associated with anything that remotely resembled a bicycle or their riders? When cycling had a negative association? When people felt bad for you when you arrived by bike? But times are achanging. When even bankers start to advertise with cycling images in their [Read more…]

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Nepean's Parks: a 19 km Bike Ride for Everyone

May 20, 2014 Hansonthebike 2

Reading Time: 5 minutesI had to bring a book back to the library and we decided to make a little outing out of it. Usually I take it back to the Main branch down town during lunch hour, but today (Victoria Day) we decided to cycle to the Centrepointe branch in Nepean, even though the Emerald Plaza branch is closer. It turned into an 19 km ride, mostly on bike paths, through parks and underneath hydro poles.   With an average speed of 14 km/hour (that included checking the map and taking some pictures) it took us about an hour and 20 minutes. [Read more…]

2014 Spring.Bike.Ottawa: "Understanding the Ottawa Cycling Budget" and much more.

March 19, 2014 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 3 minutesOn 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…]

Bill 173: Amending the Highway Traffic Act for Cycling

March 18, 2014 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 6 minutesDid you ever read Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act? I have to admit I have never gone through it with a dust comb, but I do flip through it once in a while. One of the oddities I found is that you don’t have to have a rear light (as I read it). Currently, you need to have a reflector or a red light. Indeed, you don’t need to have a rear light. Bill 173 is repairing a number of issues that society had already more or less accepted. Flashing Rear Lights Bill 173 is going to change that light issue. Or [Read more…]

Can you Bike, Skate and Walk to Work on Winter Bike to Work day?

February 5, 2014 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 5 minutesNext week, February 14, 2014  is Winter Bike to Work Day. It is a day to celebrate winter cycling worldwide. Winter cycling is easier said than done as cycling in winter requires some preparation. If you haven’t biked in winter -and I mean serious winter, as in -20C to -30C (-4to -22F) sans wind chill, not those -2C Copenhagen ‘winters‘ extended autumns, you are likely thinking that winter cycling is a crazy thing to do. Not really. But you need a well equipped bike, a few extra layers of clothes and serious maintenance on your bike. It is not the [Read more…]

Barrhaven Bicycling

December 11, 2013 Hansonthebike 3

Reading Time: 5 minutesThis winter, to beat the winter blues, I will post some sunny material that is still on the desk from earlier this year. Late August, we wanted to go for a shorter ride on a Sunday morning, but we didn’t feel like doing the closed loop along the Ottawa River once again, so after some staring on maps, we decided to go to Jan Harder territory. We packed out passports and cycled to Barrhaven. Barrhaven! When we were pondering buying a house in the late nineties, we took a look at Barrhaven, but we were nervous that the commute into [Read more…]

2013 Draft Ottawa Bicycle Plan in 1500 words

October 10, 2013 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 9 minutesI read through the draft Ottawa Bicycle Plan last night (update: I improved it a bit here and there on Thanksgiving, removing typos, adding headers and more insight in budgets). A document of nearly 150 pages that outlines the vision for the next 18 years. I think it is a very solid plan, perhaps one of the best I have read. It is clearly written by cyclists with lots of input from the public and Citizens for Safe Cycling, Ottawa’s bicycle advocacy group since 1984. It is all compassing, from infrastructure to education, from winter cycling to fall sweeping. From [Read more…]

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Going Dutch? Ontario's Cycling Strategy Released!

August 30, 2013 Hansonthebike 0

Reading Time: 8 minutesSummarised for you: The Ontario Cycling Strategy in 1000 words: How Ontario will look like in 20 years. This afternoon, August 30, 2013, the Ministry of Transportation released its first provincial cycling strategy in 20 years. This is a much better document than the first draft that was floated around at the beginning of the year. Over 1000 individuals reacted when this first draft document was open for public input, a number that is unheard of in Ontario, which shows the desire for change. From this input and the input of many professionals comes the Ontario Cycling Strategy. The document contains [Read more…]

Canada Day: Checking Out the Capital by Bike

July 2, 2013 Hansonthebike 5

Reading Time: 7 minutesWe’re not big crowd fans. We’d rather be on our own on days like Canada Day, than be with 500,000 others in down town Ottawa. There is not much attraction in seeing people with flags wrapped around their shoulders and belting out “O Canada’ at any given moment, in pubs, in buses, walking along the road or sitting in parks. But it is a day off, the weather was nice and that makes for a good bike ride. To stick to the Canada Day theme, we thought we should cycle past about 20 national treasures in the Nation’s capital. We [Read more…]

Main Street Will Become a Complete Street and Here is Why

June 20, 2013 Hansonthebike 5

Reading Time: 8 minutesUpdate July 17, 2013: council passed the proposal for Main street with 18 in favour – 6 against (Moffatt, Blais, Hubley, Desroches, Deans, Harder: worries about traffic flow from suburbia to down town and timing of reconstruction). The City of Ottawa has active transportation high on the agenda. The highest priorities are pedestrians and cyclists. After active transportation comes public transportation. At the bottom of the pile is the car, the 3000 pound gorilla that has shaped Ottawa over the last 60-70 years or so. But the car’s hegemony over infrastructure is starting to show cracks. Rescue Bronson Ave has [Read more…]