With winter finally seeming to have been beaten, it’s time to take this blog out of its seasonal (albeit never planned) hibernation.

There’s been a lot of attention paid in the past few weeks to a pilot project that would see the city create a segregated cycling route through centretown on a trial basis. The Sun was the first to report on it on March 15th (though doesn’t have most of the details exactly right and is pretty slanted against), Centretown News followed up on the 26th (their details are right, but they managed to get some names wrong), and the Citizen has something published today. Note all stories talk about different events: the Sun followed the original presentation to the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee (full disclosure: I’m chair of RCAC. I  write here as an individual), the latter follow Councillor Holmes’ stepping in to propose the creation of a different consultation mechanism.

I think that there’s lots to be optimistic about in this. Given that this will be a bit of a first for Ottawa (at least in the core). My impression, at least based on what RCAC was told, was that the plan was to begin meeting with other community and business groups. What is being proposed here is to make the consultation process more formal. That might slow things down a bit, but I’m not sure that we would have seen any changes this cycling season in any case. It’s more important that we do what is needed to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the process and is able to contribute as much as is possible: it’ll produce a better result, and it will help avoid infighting amongst various road users/business groups/residents.

Now, in The Citizen Holmes’ suggests that downtown was listed as an option, but the cycling plan calls for considerations of larger east-west routes, which is true. I think that the idea of a downtown route for the pilot has more to do with it being an area where there is a good concentration of places to go, local residents, and people commuting in. There’s also already a lot of bicycles. That’s a good mix for a first project, and is probably different than if it were farther from the core.

The public art bike racks reflect the unique identity and character of the neighbourhood and exhibit the talent and diversity of Ottawa’s artists. As a series, they encourage cycling and movement up and down the street as people explore and discover the clever and exceptional designs and make connections to the vibrant community.

I’ll spare you a snippy comment about “unique identity” of that stretch of Bank, but I think we can all be happy that there will be more places to lock up your bike. Now, let’s all look forward to when the current phase of reconstruction is finished and Bank becomes usable all through Centretown!

I am contacting you in the hope that you might help us spread the word to the Ottawa cycling community about Cycle Salvation.

Cycle Salvation is a social enterprise operating under the umbrella of Causeway Work Centre.  The business strives to achieve a triple bottom line (profit, people, planet).  We do this by providing training in bike mechanics to people who are economically disadvantaged, providing refurbished bikes at a reasonable price to the cycling community, and at the same time diverting bikes destined for scrap and landfill sites.

Of course, we depend on a steady stream of donated bikes to work on.  As you can imagine, the stockpile of bikes is running pretty low now in February.  We are hoping that we can notify the community of our need for bike donations so that the idea is fresh in their minds when they first pull their old bikes out of winter storage.

Please check out our website at www.cyclesalvation.org

CfSC does a tremendous amount of work, so if you are around you should check it out. I think that I’ll make an appearance, if only because McNabb is essentially next to my house.

Now I have no idea who (if anyone) is at fault: I didn’t see the accident so won’t speculate in that regard. It is fair to say, though, that Gladstone is usually pretty quiet along that stretch.

This sort of thing is always very startling, whether you cycle or not. However it did make me realize just how lucky I was when, a few years back I was hit by a car (albeit very slowly) and survived unscathed except for a damaged rear wheel. I was pretty shaken up afterwards (and my bike ended up getting put away a bit earlier that year), but have become somewhat cavalier when telling the story since. No longer.

The past couple of days have seen a lot of the simmering tensions between cyclists play out in the editorial pages of the citizen and on the local blogs (and I’ll weigh in, soon enough). But when you hear about something like this, and see the concern on people’s faces – pedestrian, cyclist, and driver alike, it’s pretty hard not to think how counterproductive that animosity is, when everyone shares the same goal of creating as safe and pleasent an environment as possible. Whether on wheels or feet, we are all in this together, after all.

I hope, obviously, that the gentleman is alright and recovers quickly.

I’ve long wanted to swing by and check the place out, but its previous location was just far enough to be “too far.” Now that they are 100 metres from my house, I’ll have to swing by.

Upside: Perhaps I’ll learn something!

Downside: Now I have less justification to keep buying bike parts. Now I’ll never get the wheel truing thing.

(h/t to Miss Vicky)

Given the fuss that businesses have raised, I’m surprises that this didn’t happen months ago. It really doesn’t make sense to move bus routes more than a block away from Bank, especially given that the one-way streets work conveniently in the city’s favour. It’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long to make the change, but a change for the better is still a change for the better, even if it is terribly belated.

There are three ways in which the current obstruction is potentially a hassle, all of which are because it is temporary and so we have ineffective work arounds:

1) For the businesses in the area. I feel bad for the people that work at businesses in the area, but would posit that any decline is because the street is blocked off to everyone (not just vehicles) and there is much uncertainty as to what is going on. I also point out that anyone that drives there to shop would all but certainly park on a side street or at Hartmans, both of which are still possible.

2) For commuters on the Bus. Frankly, it sucks if you are taking the bus down bank right now, but mostly because having the southbound route two blocks from Bank doesn’t make much sense. Any permanent action such as this would obviously come with redesigns of the routes that serve the area (perhaps a Kent/O’Connor split?)

3) For motorists. Now, as I said at the other blog, congestion encourages people to take mass transit, and increased mass transit use is a good. But the hassle of the current situation is not that bank is closed, it’s that Somorset is closed, meaning that you are stuck on side streets that often don’t let you cross the north/south streets. That problem doesn’t extend to the Kent/Lyon or Metcalfe/O’Connor pairs. Again, that’s a hassle because of the ad hoc nature of the current situation, not the inherent situation of Bank’s closure.

In any case, I think we need to start looking at what Bank in Centretown could be. The Market is a lot of fun precisely  because it is so pedestrian focused, and the shops and restaurants have adjusted accordingly. It’s also important to note that with a good residential core surrounding it, there is a sufficient critical mass that realistically could walk to a Bank Street pedestrian mall.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have my heart set on kicking the cars of Bank, but I do think that it is something worth talking about, even if we only block traffic on Sunday, as per the parkways in the summer.  So rarely do cities get to experiment with what happens in these sorts of situations, and yet here we have a potential data set forced upon: pity us if we waste it by not thinking outside of the box.