Cycling in Ottawa

Archive for the ‘cycling plan’ Category

It is city budget time in Ottawa: an annual event where everything is seemingly threatened with cuts, fistfights erupt in coffee shops over whether individual taxpayers should pay 11 bucks a household to fund arts programs, and no one is entirely clear what will be offered next year until the damn thing is actually passed. It is pretty incovenient for residents, but I can only imagine how trying it must be for the city staff and individual groups who don’t know if they will be employed or exist next year.

This blog, ofcourse, is paying particular attention to the budgets cycling commitments. I’m still working through the budget, but Citizens for Safe Cycling has prepared a useful breakdown of the budgets cycling commitments (PDF). The focus is, ofcourse, the Ottawa Cycling Plan. To implement it in 5 years as the city has committed would mean a commitment of around $5 million from the city this year;there is actually about $700,000. As we said at the time, the real test of commitment will be how much funding they are willing to designate.

Giacomo Panico laments the lack of seperated bike lanes in the Ottawa Cycling Plan, and suggets Laurier Avenue as one street that could be benefit from such a division. While most Ottawa streets don’t see the kind of car chaos that the New Yorks streets in the video do, I think the major arteries certainly have enough traffic to deter most casual cyclists from becoming commuters.