Less Car

Category: Ottawa

  • A Weekend in the Suburbs With No Car

    A Weekend in the Suburbs With No Car

    For many suburban parents, reading the title of this article might send shivers down your spine. For a lot of families, one car per adult in the household is pretty typical, unless a car is in the shop or out of commission for some other reason. In my case, one of the reasons we are a one-vehicle household (a minivan, which is great by the way), is to accommodate our financial priorities. We would rather spend our money elsewhere rather than finance a second car for the rare occasion we are doing two things at once that require one. We are a family of 5 with one income at the moment, and not looking to change that.

    The Setup

    When my wife got the opportunity to visit some friends in Toronto, she felt incredibly guilty taking our van on the trip, and in fact almost took the train with our youngest just to leave me the vehicle. It turns out the train is VERY expensive unless you book weeks in advance. However, from my perspective, as someone who has never commuted to work by car and doesn’t particularly enjoy or want to drive very much, this past weekend was a great opportunity to demonstrate that I was perfectly capable of getting around the suburbs with kids (who are 6 and nearly 4), with just my long-tail cargo bike.

    I encouraged my wife to drive because the train was so expensive, which meant that for 3 days (Friday being a PD Day), I was going to be a solo parent for a whole weekend for the first time, and I would not have a car. I know that some parents (and some people without kids) in this situation would accept this reality and just decide they were going to stay very close to home for the weekend. However, I wanted my kids to have a fun weekend, and we had commitments and activities on the calendar that none of us wanted to miss, including swimming lessons and a birthday party, along with Orleans Family Fun Day on Saturday.

    I didn’t do this because I thought it would be a fun experiment (though I did think it would be one). I did it because I knew that I could, and because I wanted to prove to myself that it was not only possible, but actually a positive experience and one I would seek to replicate whenever possible.

    Downtown by Transit

    On Friday, I packed a bag with snacks and water, and the three of us made our way downtown by bus and then train. The kids get very excited every time we get to take public transportation, and my son is an especially big fan of what he calls the ‘double wrecker bus’ (hopefully you can figure that one out). We went to the Rideau Centre and visited the canal locks, and then made our way back home after a few hours, and the kids had a great time.

    Transit service gets talked about a lot in Ottawa, and it would have been easier for us if the network had more frequent service, but all considered it was totally fine, and we didn’t have to pay for gas or parking and got some exercise. We had to walk from Convent Glen North up to the highway at Jeanne d’Arc, about a 10-minute walk, and the 30 came almost immediately. Trains off-peak are now at 10-minute headways, so we had an 8-minute wait for a train, and both the bus and train were quite full the whole way (suggesting perhaps people are actually using the network and maybe funding it would be a good idea after all). One thing we didn’t encounter the entire weekend was more than 1-2 minutes of traffic on the bus at the very end of our journey.

    Swimming Lessons

    Getting to swimming lessons is pretty straightforward in comparison. We probably could have just walked to Bob Macquarrie Rec Complex from Convent Glen North, but given the kids preference for the bike, that was an easy choice for me to save some time. The construction on Jeanne d’Arc at the highway makes that a little more stressful, but the pylons blocking off one lane make for a pretty nice, protected bike lane on weekends when there are no trucks there. And honestly, the cramped lanes navigating the roundabout construction are downright spacious on even the biggest bicycle. It is a little over 1 km for me to get to Bob Macquarrie, and I am certain the percentage of people who (justifiably, mind you) drive there for activities is well over 80%, despite most people having very short trips.

    Orleans Family Fun Day (Barrington Park)

    Orleans Family Fun Day is a bit of a longer trek, but still well within easy biking distance (the event was at Barrington Park next to the Orleans library branch). The toughest part of that trip is the unfriendliness of Orleans Blvd to any form of transportation that isn’t a car, but with a little creativity and a few minutes of steeled nerves and hoping for patient and friendly drivers to get across the highway overpass which is down to one lane with construction. After spending 3 lovely hours at Family Fun Day, we ended up stopping to run a couple of errands at Innes Road, and then headed back to the Convent Glen Metro near our house to pick up some groceries for dinner and the rest of the weekend (the front basket is excellent for groceries when the kids are with me).

    Birthday Party / Museum

    The other major outing we did on the weekend involved a typical suburban parent experience, one kid has a birthday party to attend, the other wants to do something with you. The party was for 2 hours down off Montreal Road, across the Greenbelt at Canotek. On this particular occasion though, I had an ace up my sleeve since on weekends into October, the Parkway is open exclusively for active transportation. I packed the gift, the three of us hopped onto my bike, and after a short trip along the River Pathway, we joined up with the Parkway and made quick work of the trip to Shefford. The entire ~3 km trip we had almost no interactions with motor vehicles, as residential streets and the industrial park were both essentially empty on the weekend.

    After dropping my daughter off at the party, I brought my son to the Aviation and Space Museum (another nearly 7 km) for a little over an hour (we have an annual pass), which he always appreciates. Another ~7 kms back, we were picking my daughter up from the party, and we were making our way home. Finally, we had made plans to walk to their grandparents for dinner, so we wrapped up the weekend with a nice 10 minute walk through the path system bisecting Vineyard and Voyageur. Wrapping up the math of the weekend, I spent a total of less than a dollar on electricity to charge my bike, biked over 35 km over 2 days, and spent 2 OC Transpo fares to go downtown and back. In exchange, we got to spend good quality time with many friends and acquaintances over the weekend days, many of whom we saw or spent time with in the community. I spent about $60 on groceries and picked up a few fun things for the kids too. We also got to see lots of people that live around us just by walking or biking past or seeing them in passing, something that happens so rarely when we’re all just jetting around in cars.

    Wrapping Up

    To just explicitly make the point I’ve been making implicitly while telling this story, it is extremely possible to get around your community without getting in and out of a car all day, and I can promise you it is way more fun (especially for kids) and I encountered literally zero traffic on any street or path I was on.

    A couple of other things here are also true. The suburbs have some work to do to make forms of transportation other than cars safe enough for the average person to feel very comfortable getting anywhere in their neighborhood on a bicycle (with or without kids). But most places are quite accessible very easily now, even if you do have to go a little out of your way.

    Public transit also needs some work, especially in the suburbs. A lot of people either don’t trust it, feel they are above it, or feel it isn’t good enough in comparison to their car to get them where they need to go when they need to get there. And in many cases right now, that’s true. OC Transpo needs more funding, more ridership, or some combination of the two, to be more reliable, more accessible, and more resilient. However, there are lots of new stations coming online in the next few years, and I believe OC Transpo truly believes in the mission of improving service, pulling the system out of the death spiral that has been threatening over the last 5 years.

    The system is not perfect, but these options, walking, cycling, and public transit, are going to be key to Ottawa’s Official Plan and the Orleans Corridor Secondary Plan. The more we can use these other options, the better for the climate, traffic, and our combined sense of community.

  • Bike Commute and Errands – August 7, 2024

    Bike Commute and Errands – August 7, 2024

    In a single, normal day, I biked over 41 km on my ebike. Starting in Orleans, I went downtown for work, then from downtown to the Ottawa Hospital (main campus), and finally from the hospital home.

    This trip was absolutely made possible (and was much cheaper and less physically demanding) by my ebike. And the trip itself was actually pretty good overall. It would be even better if the city was less concerned with making sure cars have the red carpet rolled out city wide while the rest fight for space off the side of the road.

    I’ve owned an electric cargo bike for about 2-3 months now, and a few things about these trip(s) on Wednesday have stuck with me:

    • Without the electric assist, it would have SUUUUCKED to cover that distance. The battery made it a breeze and my legs still felt it plenty.
    • There is actually a lot of reasonable and even good bike infrastructure in the city, and unfortunately also a lot of “bike infrastructure” that actively makes people who try to use it less safe, despite what are probably good intentions.
    • There are a TON of gaps in safe infrastructure and even in unsafe infrastructure that serve as barriers to people using this network. The most notable one that seems to just be something that is “finished” but is just terrible is the connection between the ‘back’ side of the hospital ring road and the neighbourhood to the north. Looking at the maps after the fact it seems like intentional and proper connections do exist, but Google Maps cycling directions routed me towards dirt and desire paths. This is presumably intended to save time, but often a better route would have been seconds longer. If the city doesn’t want to invest in filling in these dirt and desire paths with actual pathway connections, better signage for wayfinding would go a long way. Right now, people who haven’t done these trips every day will have a really hard time navigating.
    • Having room for storing cargo on a bike is a game changer! Not having to take a backpack and having that backpack limit what you can have with you is incredible and makes sweat much less of an issue (combined of course with the battery which makes hauling cargo much easier as well).
    • Parking safely is a huge liability. When you pull your car into a parking space (especially somewhere with a massive parking garage that is monitored 24/7) you can be reasonably certain in most places that it will be fine while you’re running errands. Nothing happened, but I was very worried about my bike and have invested in a massive chain lock (6′), an AirTag and a motion alarm that will beep obnoxiously loudly.
    • The best part of all this, as someone who really doesn’t enjoy or get anything out of driving, is that it was FUN doing this.
    • It’s really too bad that my round trip from home, office, routine medical care, and back home required over 40 km of travel. We all make choices (like where to live and my place of work) and these are choices I’ve made (before getting orange-pilled, mind you), but honestly doing more to make services and work accessible to people without needing to cross the city (RTO I’m looking at you) will continue to make our cities more sustainable and will push the next marginal trip to one that is more accessible on foot, by bike, or by transit.

    More on the Gaps in Infrastructure

    Also, I had to look it up because it seems criminal, but there is supposed to be an officially sanctioned bike route the whole length of the LRT, to the point that they are currently working on extending a real bike route out to Trim from Blair… Buuuuuut the literal only connection between St. Laurent and Blair on bike includes driving down the middle of Ogilvie Road literal inches away from traffic at 60kph, with major intersections/lights every few minutes at most (every 30 seconds in a car).

    Hilariously (or at least it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous), every Google Street View image of this road it’s this empty. Rush hour capacity is not long.

    This shouldn’t be a bike route and in fact I’d argue it isn’t one. I can do it, as a person who is willing and experienced with vehicular cycling (out of necessity), but it is a travesty and I mostly see people on Ogilvie by the Gloucester Centre on the sidewalk, and they are 100% making the right choice. The painted lane on the right side of the street on Ogilvie from the St Laurent mall down to den Haag is bad enough, but being stuck in the middle of traffic, completely hung out to dry by the city, is just unforgiveable. It’s a nightmare.

    Now I’m just venting but my route home also includes this beauty at Wellington and Lyon:

    Street View of Wellington and Lyon
    Bird’s Eye View of Wellington and Lyon

    There is accommodation (painted mostly) for bikes on either side of this intersection, but with 2 right turn lanes, if you want to not die you have to somehow safely merge in usually heavy traffic across 2 lanes to get across the intersection safely.

    At this exact stop trying to make this merge last week, I had a bus that was in the left lane drive right up to me honking and needlessly close, while I was just trying to get across here… Pretty much the only way to do it while staying sane is to know it’s coming and get over in to the left lane (fully taking the lane) way before you get to the intersection, which means going up a hill on a bike in a lane fully meant for cars where just EVERYBODY is going to be mad at you.

    By the way, I can’t know for sure, but I feel like that bus fully saw me and only honked and drove too close to me because he was annoyed, there’s no way he didn’t see me trying to get across safely.

    There are maybe 3 places I can think of in the whole city with this double right turn configuration that aren’t on the highway, where Elgin meets Rideau right down the street there is another, and by the post office off Industrial is the third I can think of, and they are all terrible for not-cars.

    Final Thoughts

    Overall, I was very pleased with the way I was able to get around the city on my bike. The city has absolutely made progress in terms of separate and at least sometimes protected infrastructure, but there are very obvious and needless gaps that will hopefully continue to be addressed.

    I will say though, it is actually very easy to see where these gaps are, all you have to do is get on a bike and try to go somewhere, the rough spots and issues jump off the road and try to knock you over all the time.

  • Orleans Blvd Overpass Design

    Orleans Blvd Overpass Design

    I am writing today about the Orleans Blvd overpass design updates (Stage 2 LRT Station Connectivity Enhancement Study | Convent Glen Station (Orléans Boulevard)) which sort of came and went quietly since last year (and I was even trying to pay attention!). I understand that the solution proposed last year had its issues (namely conflict spots between buses letting off passengers and cyclists), and I agree the design clearly needed more thought.

    The last design I saw last year.

    However, it appears that thought was skipped by the planners, and instead the road will be returned basically to its state before the renovation (plus a pair of bus stops and room for people driving to the train stop, and bike parking is a great addition too).

    This seems like a failure of imagination at the very least.

    It’s my understanding that at this point (not sure exactly when this was posted on the City website, but it can’t have been that long ago) the actual design in terms of what’s being built is fully locked in, which is a shame but you literally can’t change the past. However, it does seem like there is at least an opportunity to take what infrastructure is set and mould it to be a little more environmentally friendly (not to mention safer).

    Specifically, what I’m talking about is the possibility of the outer lanes of the overpass being reserved for bus and bike traffic. I have been getting to work on bike via Rideau Street through downtown where the road has the same setup (4 lanes, 2 reserved for buses) and even at rush hour it’s fine.

    The last 2(+?) years with the overpass down to 1 lane has proved (in my opinion) that car traffic volume doesn’t support the need for 4 lanes, even at rush hour this isn’t really a concern that needs to be factored in (and are we really building for the 10-15 minutes a road is the absolute busiest, which is already a choice many drivers make?).

    If the overpass ISN’T given lanes with bus/bike priority, and traffic comes anywhere close to slowing down or stopping over the overpass, I’d argue this is bad for everybody, as it means buses and bikes will get stuck in that, and when buses stop, cars will get annoyed and be unhappy anyways. It’s fairly easy for a bike to wait for a bus if necessary (obviously not ideal, but the space is what it is), and the lanes are wide enough when the bus is stopped that a bike can probably easily pass safely if they feel comfortable.

    The only thing I haven’t really considered above so far is the passenger pickup/dropoff spaces, but I think cars actually dropping off or picking up using the lane would be fine to do that (outside the flow of traffic) and then merge back in.

    All of this obviously only considers the absolute busiest times on this road, the other ~98% of the time it’s just obvious that having dedicated infrastructure like this makes sense in terms of public transit flow and bike safety, there is no way there is enough traffic the rest of the time for 4 lanes to be anywhere close to necessary for cars.

    I feel very strongly that we dedicate far too much road space for cars, I am definitely biased in that direction, but I also feel that it lines up with the priorities of the community and the city to make mobility and transportation network decisions thinking in this way. I’d really be interested to hear if any conversation like this (basically using different paint/signs on this road while keeping the actual built infrastructure as designed) has taken place.

    I really look forward to the day when all of Orleans Blvd is a complete street accessible in this way by all road users, but for now this seems like an easy win, and will make it easier for people north of the highway to access St. Joseph and the Heart of Orleans without getting into their cars.

  • What My Kids See and Do Aboard My Ebike

    What My Kids See and Do Aboard My Ebike

    My older kids are 6 and 3 (coming up on 4 now), and they absolutely love spending time on the back of my cargo ebike. In past years, we would go for rides together, but they were in a trailer behind my hybrid bike, and it wasn’t really a family ride since my wife didn’t have a bike to join us. It was also much less convenient to run errands like groceries with a bike trailer with 2 kids and no additional storage on my bike.

    This year, since I’ve had my ebike for right around 2 months now, my kids are eager and excited to hop on the back of my bike, and we have done excursions and run errands together multiple times, especially since they’ve been off school, and I just wrapped up 4 weeks of parental leave. I love the fact that my kids are so excited to spend time on the bike, and it’s clear to me that they are making all kinds of observations about the world from their vantage point behind me.

    What the Kids See and Do

    The first thing worth mentioning that I observed from them on the back of my bike was that my daughter (6) said unprompted “biking to Metro is more fun than the car” while we were on the way to the grocery store. They both agreed that taking the bike was more fun, and I completely agree. Being out in the open and riding through it on a bike is a completely different experience compared to what feels more like floating through or even overtop of the community when you’re in a car. There is absolutely no connection to the rest of the world, you’re just in a sealed-off little bubble only interacting with the other little bubbles that are the other cars.

    In the Neighbourhood

    We’ve gone for a few longer rides now since that one, including visiting the library and going to Petrie Island (which is about a 15-20km round trip). On the library trip, we had to take a couple of less busy streets to avoid fast-moving cars on the main roads, and so we ended up passing by at least 4-5 different little parks and playgrounds. Since the kids weren’t trapped in the car bubble, and we weren’t floating around at 40-60 kph, they could spend longer actually seeing what the world around them looks like. On the way home, we picked one of the playgrounds to stop and play at for a bit, and this is a playground we never would have even known about without this trip. Now, the kids know where this park is and can even see it from the nearest main road (Jeanne d’Arc Blvd), so they’re even able to get a better sense of direction and context for the layout of their neighbourhood no matter how they’re getting around.

    Being Friendly

    Finally, the kids have started doing an absolutely incredible thing since our trip to Petrie Island. When they were on the back of the bike, every time we would pass someone on the paths, both of them started jubilantly calling ‘Hello!’ to people. It was so cute when they first started doing that and seeing that people were responding, not just saying hi or hello back, but waving, and smiling big smiles back. It’s not typical that you get such a greeting when you’re out walking or biking (people in Orleans will say hi or nod as you pass, but usually not a fun hello like that). I could watch peoples’ neutral faces absolutely light up when they were greeting, and basically everybody responded with a smile and a wave.

    They’ve done this every bike ride or errand trip since, and the most interesting thing I observed was that my son (3) tried to say Hello to an SUV while we were crossing a street, and my daughter (6) reminded him that they couldn’t hear us in the car. The fact that she picked up on that right away and they both agreed wordlessly that saying it to vehicles was useless really struck me, and just makes me want to do more and more with them on bike.

    Cycling and walking in your neighbourhood/community is super important for social development, whether you’re a small child or an adult, and I really think it’s a great way to stay connected to the people around you, not to mention it can make someone’s day.

  • Jeanne d’Arc Blvd Pedestrian Crossing

    Jeanne d’Arc Blvd Pedestrian Crossing

    Creating a new pedestrian crossing to get across a certain problematic section of Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard is something I’ve been mulling over and wanting to talk about for literal months.

    My version of this story contains some aspects of government bureaucracy, car-friendly transportation rules, and common-sense safety and accessibility changes. The exact spot I’m describing today is on Jeanne d’Arc, between the intersection of Vineyard/Fortune and Voyageur/Vorlage (names in the suburbs get weird where the same road gets multiple names even though sections of the road are less than a kilometre long.

    Even from the level of detail of this first map, keen-eyed observers can see there is something going on here, a pair of green lines that seem to match up almost perfect, separated by a big ol’ road. This is basically the exact spot that served as my measurement location for the first post on this blog: Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard North – Road Layout Update. This specific spot is also home to of the most obvious places for new pedestrian infrastructure in this whole neighbourhood.

    Zooming In

    Getting a little closer to this ‘intersection’, you can clearly see that an effort was made here to connect the path network, but maybe someone lost an argument, or it was decided that traffic being slowed or stopped one extra time here if someone wanted to cross was unacceptable.

    Personally, in the 5 years I’ve lived in this neighbourhood, I have crossed this road at this point probably a dozen times. I’ve done it with a stroller, I’ve done it with a toboggan (to a community event, no less). It’s frankly embarrassing that the path system is so wholly broken by this one disconnect that it has probably prevented hundreds, if not thousands, of trips that could be walked but were instead driven.

    To those not familiar with the area, in the 300 m or so around this spot, there are two schools, a fire station, a basketball court (in dire need of a renewal, by the way), 2 soccer fields, a baseball diamond, a boarded hockey rink, a community shopping plaza (micro strip mall, basically), several large green spaces, parks and playgrounds, and some very nice active transportation paths that form a nice network. These amenities would all unilaterally become more accessible if this crossing were opened up with a controlled signal or any kind of pedestrian infrastructure.

    The Bureaucracy

    Now, for those of you thinking “Rob, why don’t you ask your local municipal representative about this”. It seems like a pretty obvious safety and accessibility win to open up this crossing, traffic impact would probably be minimal, and commuters might see their trips slowed by a few seconds 1-2 times a week at most.

    I want to preface what I say next by saying that I don’t begrudge the local municipal staff, councillors, or really anybody involved locally for not rocking the boat for this. Incremental change like this, whether you agree it is a good idea or not, has become somewhat radical, especially if it makes things technically harder for cars.

    Tangent: The Roundabout

    However, another thing I’ll say before I talk about the politics of this is that a BIG discussion going on in the community right now, happened a little over 200 m away from this spot, is the addition of a roundabout near the local school, designed to help the buses visiting the soon-to-be-completed Jeanne d’Arc LRT station turn around once they’ve completed their routes.

    This has become a huge discussion point because parents of the children at this school are concerned about safety at this intersection, and many view buses and this roundabout as dangerous for kids getting to school. I think this is pretty silly, the roundabout is very well considered, and will itself have a controlled pedestrian signal and a crossing guard. The design is almost certainly safer for students, given the lower vehicle speeds to navigate the intersection and the only result of these changes will be less car traffic through this intersection, not more.

    Anyhow, this tangent is to add nearby context to the discussion, now back to the bureaucracy.

    Now, when I reached out to my councillor to ask about this spot and the possibility of adding a crossing, I wasn’t necessarily expecting smooth sailing and that this would happen within a month or two. Even I am not that naive. However, I didn’t expect the actual response I got, which I’ll paraphrase here.

    The Argument for Status Quo

    I was told that provincial regulations dictated that a pedestrian crossing (PXO is the acronym they used, so I’ll borrow that here) could not be placed less than 200 m away from another signalized intersection. The other intersection I mentioned (with Voyageur/Vorlage) is about 160 m from the spot I’d propose makes the most sense for a PXO. I’ll note that this 200 m number is totally arbitrary, and I can think of PLENTY of exceptions to it in Ottawa that were surely based on some kind of reasoning that could be applied here. Usually, the reasoning would involve safety or some kind of exceptional road design.

    The argument was made (by traffic engineers and city staff, relayed to me by the councillor’s office) that because the road curves at this spot, and the speed limit along this stretch is relatively high at 60 kph, having motorists potentially need to stop for this PXO signal is dangerous. Personally, I would argue that if it is dangerous having pedestrians cross because of the speed and the design of the road, perhaps the speed limit shouldn’t be 60, since you are driving between an elementary school and a fire station.

    More Road Design Considerations

    Another factor to consider is that due to upcoming changes to the road nearby, like the roundabout going in, there is already ongoing discussion about the speed limit along this whole stretch being reduced to 40 kph. This is because over a relatively short stretch, passing several schools, the road already jumps from speed limits of 40 and 60 several times, and a new speed camera a couple of blocks further east on this road has been giving massive numbers of tickets to drivers in the community. This isn’t surprising, because the road itself is absolutely encouraging you to go faster than this with its design, wide lanes and clear sight lines.

    The road will also bottleneck down to 1 lane on either end once the roundabout goes in, so I would make the argument now is a perfect time to bite the bullet and say that this road should just be 1 lane at 40 kph for the whole length in this section. At that point, not only would a PXO be more reasonable, having big flashing lights for motorists would be less necessary (though I would argue still a good idea), and travel distance in traffic would be reduced by half for pedestrians (only needing to cross two lanes instead of four).

    This is About Tradeoffs

    Now, before concluding this piece, I’d like to return to the provincial regulation requiring 200 metres between signalized intersections to add a PXO. With a distance to the nearest intersection in this case of about 160 m, here is what traffic engineers are suggesting when a pedestrian approaches this spot from either direction with a hypothetical crossing. Rather than having motorists slow down or stop for a few seconds occasionally to let a pedestrian or cyclist continue their walk along a path, it is suggested that they should have to walk at least 320 m (160 m there and 160 m more back) in order to allow for traffic flow. They are also saying that this should still be the case even if the detoured walk is a total of nearly 400 m. It’s no surprise at all to me that unless I am with my young family doing this on foot, I sometimes just walk across the road (dangerously!).

    One last point to wrap up this logical garden path: there is already a roundabout going in at one of the two nearby intersections. The logic for that roundabout going in is that buses accessing the nearby LRT station need to be able to turn around. However, I would make the argument that if all the described changes take place (40 kph limit, reduction to one lane, adding a PXO crossing), having a roundabout replace the signalized intersection at Jeanne d’Arc and Voyageur/Vorlage as well makes perfect sense.

    This intersection could also have a pedestrian crossing with lights like at the other roundabout, and given this change in traffic pattern, its entirely possible that traffic flow through the area on an average basis actually moves a little better, with less likelihood of starting and stopping almost all of the time. And when there is a higher likelihood of interactions between pedestrians and motorists at these places (rush hour and around the start/end of the school day), should we not be prioritizing the safety of our children anyhow? These intersections are already patrolled by crossing guards, surely these changes would only make their job easier.

    In Summary

    To wrap up, I have a lot to say about this set of upgrades to the road design of this stretch of Jeanne d’Arc Blvd. I think it is doable in a fairly short time frame and without too much expense, and the resulting road design is not only fairer and more equitable, but it’s safer and requires less upkeep and maintenance.

  • Bike Trip to the Library – July 17, 2024

    Bike Trip to the Library – July 17, 2024

    I’m wrapping up 4 weeks of parental leave from work (going back Monday), and so for the last few month I have been spending all day every day with kids. Since I got the new bike (which can carry the older two on the back), the kids have been wanting to run errands and do things on the bike instead of the car (which I love to hear of course as I feel the same way). This means that I have been thinking a lot about bike routes to certain places I’ve only imagined actually getting to with kids on the bike.

    Getting to the Library

    The library is one of the places I aim to go to more often with my kids, the local library was one of my favorite places to be growing up, and it was especially nice when I could make it there on my own on the bike. In Calgary where I grew up, the library wasn’t particularly easy to get to on a bike, but it wasn’t far and I am very comfortable on a bike, so from an early age I just biked in traffic, and this was the late-90s, early 2000s, so bike infrastructure definitely wasn’t a thing.

    In setting out to do this, I got looking at maps to see that the most efficient several routes to get to the library were all just on the street. Some streets were less busy than others, but the stretch to get across the highway consists of two options, both of which are heavily under construction and each consist of 2-lane roads where you’re asked to ‘share the road’ single file.

    Crossing the highway

    I could only do that short stretch because I feel very comfortable taking the full lane, and because I’ve biked enough that I can travel about 30kph up the hill across the bridge to cross the highway. For those of you who don’t bike on the streets often, when you need to share the lane, every car behind you INSTANTLY feels the need to try to pass you at speed even if there is additional danger for them in doing that. This is obviously exacerbated by a larger speed difference between the speed limit and the speed of your bike, but even if I’m going 30 and the car traffic should be going 40, cars will typically exceed the speed limit temporarily just to get around you, sometimes a lot, because they won’t have to wait 30 seconds behind you.

    I’m happy to note this particular stretch across the highway on the two nearby bridges (Jeanne d’Arc and Orleans Blvds) are being improved, and so both are partly under construction right now. There will be a pair of multi-use paths going in to cross these two bridges, which I expect will greatly improve the comfort and safety of getting across the highway. It has been under construction for over a year now, and cycling even alone hasn’t felt particularly safe for me at any point during that time, nor did it feel safe at any time before construction began.

    Once we got across the highway, the road opens back up to 4 total lanes again, which for such a low volume route (with sections at both ends that bottleneck to 1 lane, by the way) basically means the outer two lanes function as bike lanes outside of the very short morning and afternoon rush (I’ve never witnessed this busy period to be honest, but there are people who swear traffic volume requires 2 lanes each way).

    The Rest of the Way

    Once I made it across the highway, I got some advice from a fellow bike parent that you could avoid some car traffic to do the last stretch of the route following basically back roads through the adjacent neighbourhoods. I had the map (below) in my head as an approximate route plan, but it basically involves winding through local streets and on to and off pathways. It’s kind of a maze but it does work, and with kids on the bike it does feel way safer than the alternative.

    When I tried to bike to the library on my own in preparation for this trip (imagine ‘trying’ a trip alone in a car to make sure it’s safe to take a family later 😢), I attempted to use the logical efficient route (and the one suggested for bikes by Google Maps) and essentially follow Orleans Blvd for the entire last half of the route. On the map that would basically be replacing the whole last section weaving through the community with just following the obvious straight line path across the highway all the way up the hill to the library. It’s actually a very simple route in a car where you’re not worrying about these things.

    Orleans Blvd

    Orleans Blvd has TONS of space for wider sidewalks and cycle tracks (see this post for an example of the space there is in this right-of-way), but in its current form, it’s a 4-lane road with a speed limit of 60, and it is designed for cars to feel totally comfortable going MUCH faster than that. Even on an ebike going full tilt without passengers on my test run, I was going low 30s kph and being passed in the other lane by cars going 60-70. Again, the road volume doesn’t require 2 lanes each way, so cars typically wouldn’t need to close pass you in your lane, but they certainly would try if it came to saving a few seconds and there was another car next to them. Going up a hill in traffic is the worst, because as I said before it all comes down to the speed difference, I think cycle tracks on this route would probably be the most beneficial because it will enable less confident riders to feel comfortable taking this route, where I wouldn’t recommend its use today at all.

    The one nice thing about the route we were required to take to feel safe (not to say this wouldn’t be possible if there was safe bike infrastructure) is that while taking back roads through the neighbourhood, we passed by at least 4-5 little parks and playgrounds, each of which the kids absolutely would have stopped and played at. On the way home, we did pick one of them to stop at, which really capped off the experience for the kiddos.

    Conclusions

    In summary, I think this ride is absolutely doable if you feel up for being hassled by cars as you cross the highway (it is literally 1-2 blocks of the whole trip), but with some consideration of this kind of bike traffic, this route could be SO MUCH BETTER. Given traffic volumes in the area, having this bridge be one lane is not a big deal (it’s been like this for a year!), and it would enable so many more people to get around outside of their cars.

  • Vineyard / Voyageur Community Bus Loop

    Vineyard / Voyageur Community Bus Loop

    I’m a big fan of efficient, convenient, and frequent bus routes that access or connect common amenities. Growing up in Calgary, I made frequent use of what that city calls ‘community shuttles’, basically smaller buses that tend to run shorter closed loops in a community connecting riders to transit hubs or nearby amenities.

    A Tangent on Community Shuttles

    From what I hear (and I did a fair bit of research on this), the community shuttle program has been difficult to maintain in Calgary, but part of this is because ridership on some of these smaller routes is precarious, so some are being converted to full big bus routes (a good problem to have, I guess), whereas some are underused and are being cancelled in favour of an attempt at an on-demand service where you call or schedule a pickup, which will obviously take more work and probably longer overall unless your timing is known in advance and you’re a good planner.

    The community shuttles still being used today are vehicles reminiscent of something like an airport shuttle, I did source a few reference pictures from a very helpful forum website, the Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board (because there is a niche for absolutely everything) or CPTDB, and some very helpful Reddit users on r/Calgary.

    Latest design of community shuttles
    Interior of community shuttles (older model)

    A Community Shuttle Streetcar?

    Now, with this tool at hand, we can start to look at the possibility raised by having a vehicle like this in the OC Transpo fleet. Personally, I find accessing the businesses and amenities across the highway from my neighbourhood to be challenging outside of a car at the BEST of times. Sure, if you need to, you can do it, but if you already have a car, and ESPECIALLY if you are bringing family (kids, mostly) or multiple people, best case scenario now you’re walking a long way through infrastructure that is signalling that you’re sort of a nuisance that must be legally accommodated.

    Despite the fact that there is a complete set of bus stops and shelters within a few hundred feet of the Jeanne d’Arc highway overpass, the sidewalks and crossing infrastructure is currently bolted on to what the planners already considered a perfectly acceptable design for a car-centric area. Now, this is already under construction to be much better with the LRT stop opening here next year, but there’s a real community opportunity to make this a viable, multi-modal connection bridging the two sides of the highway with safe infrastructure, with these complete street designs diving all the way into the community on both sides rather than ending a few hundred feet down in either direction and dropping you back on to a 4-lane road with narrow sidewalks.

    Anyhow, along with that vision for the overpass, I think there is a great opportunity to draw people in and enable them to actually use reliable active and public transportation options, which is to run a set of local shuttles that take riders from the community (there is a clear and obvious loop I’ve highlighted below that would accommodate this, as an example). The loop has the shuttle cross the highway, loop around the roundabout at the far end, and then return and do the loop again.

    A shuttle like this could run every 12-15 minutes like at a resort or large theme park, and reliably bring patrons or staff to and from the many businesses running along the strip down St. Joseph. Combine this with frequent buses along or down St. Joseph itself and there’s an opportunity here to make this street a safe, walkable destination that isn’t just filled with mostly underused parking that on average take up way more space than the businesses they attempt to support.

    If you look at the map of this part of Orleans, it doesn’t take much creativity to start drawing our 5-6 other possible community shuttle routes that could run with a similar cadence, and make St. Joseph a destination like Westboro, Bank, or Elgin Street that people actually want to visit, as opposed to pulling up in a car to a specific shop, spending time buying something or eating there, and then driving away. And with linkages along these routes to the LRT, people can visit from other places in town or even from other cities without needing to rent a (VERY EXPENSIVE THESE DAYS) car.

    Final Thoughts

    I think the key to a program like this is to make the program affordable and incentivise people to actually use it. Maybe don’t charge on weekends for the shuttles for the first 3-6 months, and run them frequently throughout the day so you don’t even have to think about the schedule to go catch one. Get people used to thinking about it as a viable option, and worry less about a public good operating as a for-profit operation that needs to return on investment.

    The bus that currently runs what this route will become once the LRT opens, the 237, literally only runs 4 times a day during peak hours on weekdays. It’s used to get downtown workers to the current LRT during rush hour, but we can do so much better. Aside from this bus, anybody in the community wanting to take public transit needs to walk anywhere from a few hundred metres at least, up to over a kilometre just to get to the nearest ‘main road’ at Jeanne d’Arc.

  • Running Errands on a Cargo Bike – July 14, 2024

    Running Errands on a Cargo Bike – July 14, 2024

    I did something today that would have been very hard to do without the cargo ebike I got this spring (I’ll describe this bike more in a future post). This afternoon I did a couple of errands on the bike, which is better in almost every imaginable way than doing equivalent tasks would have been in a car. After dropping off a fairly large package (big enough I never could have attempted this with my standard hybrid bike) at Canada Post in the Shoppers at Jeanne d’Arc and Orleans Blvds, I took Orleans Blvd south up the hill, then made my way over to Canadian Tire for some pool chemicals.

    On the way there, I took Jeanne d’Arc to see the newly paved and painted intersection at Frank Bender on a bike. On the way, I tried to look at the sidewalks along Jeanne d’Arc leading up to that area. They look like they are pretty old, giving me some hope that if they do get prioritized for replacement in 2-5 years (or something) it may be possible to make better use of the Jeanne d’Arc right-of-way for active transport. I grew up on a bicycle so I feel quite comfortable on almost any road, but even talking to my parents in Calgary (in their 60s/70s) about how I’ve been biking more and advocating for an active transportation network in Ottawa last week, my parents mentioned that they don’t bike as much as they would when they were younger because of missing infrastructure links.

    My route to Canadian Tire.

    Anyhow, on the way back from Canadian Tire, I went straight through Frank Bender on to Belcourt Blvd using the newly paved connection I mentioned earlier, and I must say Belcourt is a dream cycling route, with almost no traffic since cars can’t get through. A few stop signs (including one that is totally redundant for bikes) are really the only things stopping bikes from cruising uninterrupted straight through the neighbourhood. The planners and folks who implemented this efficient community connection deserve a congrats! However, that route did just dump me out on to St. Joseph at the end, which is obviously less ideal for less experienced people. It would be cool if this kind of infrastructure had somewhat logical beginnings and destinations when they’re planned out, their disjointed nature makes them hard to use for less and more experienced people.

    My route home (shows walking because the cycling connection where Frank Bender turns in to Belcourt (white dot in the blue dots near where it says ORLEANS VILLAGE – CHATEAUNEUF) is so new I had to edit Google Maps today).

    All that said, I will celebrate progress. When I take routes like Jeanne d’Arc, Orleans Blvd, and St. Joseph Blvd, I can’t help but picture and imagine what they might look like if we took the climate, housing, and affordability crises deadly seriously and really committed like cities like Paris or Montreal to densification, a complete and less car-dependent transportation network, and allowing mixed-use zoning to make it easier to create complete neighbourhoods in a relatively compact space. I fully recognize it is MUCH easier to say those words in a vacuum than to implement any of those things while keeping a functional city running with a strapped budget, but I will keep dreaming about it.

  • Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard North – Road Layout Update

    Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard North – Road Layout Update

    My neighbourhood

    I live in a suburb of Ottawa called Orleans, and though the neighborhood is starting to work towards a modern understanding of good urban design, a lot of the transportation infrastructure in the community is based on 99% car traffic. There are affordances for other modes of transport in some places, but in many cases unless it is a brand-new change, these affordances are for leisure (like with most of the park paths), not transportation.

    Left: Current streetscape; Right: After the redesign.

    I have many qualms with the loopy, inefficient neighbourhood street layouts, and missing sidewalks, but I’ll save discussion of those for another time. Today, I want to talk about the main road granting access to my neighborhood, Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard.

    Jeanne d’Arc is about the least imaginative way I could imagine designing a road in the 80s, where I could imagine having trees and some green space alongside the road would be viewed as a vast improvement over the downtown core where trees would be few and far between, and grass would be a luxury.

    The Current Design

    Below, I’ve mocked up the average layout of the 32+ metre boulevard streetscape with a very cool tool called Streetmix. You can see the road has 4 lanes, plus extremely generous grassy areas on either side, followed by a <1.75m sidewalk at the very edge of the boulevard (Streetmix actually calls this ‘too narrow’ and throws up warnings when you put the sidewalk in).

    By the way, Streetmix also warns me that the 4m wide outer lanes of the road are considered far too wide. This boulevard was overbuilt at 14m wide for 4 lanes, presumably at a time when this was considered future-proofing for a time when it would just get busier and busier, something that has just never happened.

    Drivers who use this route to commute every morning at the absolute peak of traffic would probably tell you it gets backed up occasionally, but for the remaining 99% of the time you’re much more likely to see at MOST a handful of cars than anything resembling so much as a slowdown.

    On its own, this overbuilt road is underutilized, but this is true of many roads in many places all around North America. The true tragedy of this road in its current state is the missed opportunity to include other modes of transportation in its design.

    It’s clear from spending any amount of time on or around this road that cars are ABSOLUTELY the priority consideration of this road. Even though the road surface itself is in pretty desperate need of a resurfacing itself, the sidewalk is in even worse shape. Not only is it extremely narrow, but in a few places, every year overgrowth from adjacent bushes actively pushes users on to the grass. It’s not uncommon to see bikes on the sidewalk as well, since there is no safe way for less comfortable or experienced riders from sharing this already narrow space with anybody who walks here.

    A 32.2 m wide boulevard (all distances were measured using the measuring tool on Google Maps) is massive considering the traffic volume of all kinds here, and giving nearly half to cars (14 m), while having nearly 50% of the space dedicated to grass and trees, while all other road users are squished in to the outer <3.5 m (around 10-15% of the total road space) is frankly embarrassing.

    The embarrassment only gets worse when you find out that this road connects directly to a transportation hub with the LRT system opening in 2025, and buses come along this road at MOST every 10-15 minutes at peak times (all routes combined). With wide paths, multi-modal considerations, and a little creativity, we can rethink this road to not only accommodate a way larger variety of modes of transportation, but to carry a higher volume of actual people throughout the day, instead of just calculating for the most cars the road will ever see.

    The Redesign

    Below is a mockup of what Jeanne d’Arc could look like with a road design that offers multiple realistic options for travel. This is just one option, with all the added space that at this point can’t realistically be used for anything but this road, there is a LOT of flexibility.

    In this specific example layout, I’ve added an extra-wide sidewalk, added more trees and a bike lane in either direction. I have removed the extra car lane in each direction here as well, but there is space to keep it, although other changes to this road happening elsewhere mean that 1 lane at 40kph (instead of the current 2 lanes at 60kph) probably makes sense as the appropriate lane configuration.

    With this layout, the street is much safer (it is bordered by many parks and 2 schools in a relatively short stretch), and it is designed for travel at the safe speed of 40 kph instead of requiring annoying speed traps and red-light cameras to entrap drivers with big wide lanes. One other nice feature is that the road will be much quieter for houses backing on to it at 40 kph.

    Final Thoughts

    To wrap up this redesign, prioritizing safe transport, via multiple modes, and in a more sustainable way, seems like a pretty clear win for the community. At most, detractors could say that driving may get a few seconds slower, maybe 1-2 minutes longer to traverse the whole length of the several km section.

    Perhaps it is transparently a value judgment that these are my priorities, but the tradeoffs of designing a transportation system with redundancy and multiple good options and reducing suburban car dependency and sprawling overbuilt roadways are unquestionably positives compared to the alternative (what we have now in many cases).