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by Dave

More Segregated Bike Lanes for Downtown Ottawa

February 23, 2011 in biking by Dave

ncc_bike_lane_on_wellingtonThe SpokesMan has just reported that, after today’s decision by City council to approve the 2-year Laurier Avenue segregated bike lane project, the NCC is looking at building it’s own segregated bike lane down Wellington Street.

According to the SpokesMan, the NCC’s lanes will run along Wellington St. from the Portage bridge to Bay Street – a pretty short stretch but one that is at the intersection of several bike paths and is particularly unfriendly to bicyclists. The lanes on both sides of Wellington will be segregated from car traffic.

Apparently the NCC is also studying the idea of adding another set of segregated lanes from Bay to Sussex Drive – a much longer stretch – but no plans have been announced yet.

Just thinking out loud, here, but wouldn’t an NCC segregated bike lane down Wellington from the Portage Bridge to Sussex kind of make the shorter one four blocks over on Laurier (which isn’t really connected to the bike paths) a little redundant?

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3 responses to More Segregated Bike Lanes for Downtown Ottawa

  1. Charles A-M said on February 24, 2011

    Regarding Bay-Sussex, let me think out loud for a moment:

    There were a few reasons that Wellington was disqualified as the route for the City’s SBL. Without consulting the original reports:
    - Lots of buses
    - Requires NCC agreement (esp. for connections to Lebreton Flats)
    - Wide sidewalks needed for big pedestrian crowds at major events

    And the biggest one in my mind is the connectivity. I guess if you’re trying to bypass downtown it works OK, but then there’s a pathway just along the river for that. If you want to connect to downtown, your only options are Bay and Lyon–Percy stops at Laurier, and Kent/Bank/O’Connor/Metcalfe/Elgin are nowhere near bicycle friendly. While they could be changed to improve connections, the purpose of the City’s project is a cheap, easy-to-remove east-west project along a single road.

    Many of these issues will still be faced by the NCC, but the biggest one is that it’s at the far north end of downtown. Laurier has buildings on either side with lots of employees and residents who can make use of the bike lane, whereas Wellington is mostly a touristy thing.

    If anything, the NCC’s connections don’t make any sense whatsoever WITHOUT the Laurier bike lane: the Bay-Portage provides a connection to the west end of the Laurier lane heading to Gatineau or the Ottawa River Pathway, and a Bay-Sussex lane will provide a longtime missing link in the pathway system East (sic) of the canal. Once you build that Bay-Portage connection, you tempt Eastbound cyclists to come up from the pathways on to Wellington, and they will naturally want to continue along it.

    I cycle along Wellington often, and it’s very much not fun. The curbs extend at the road level about a foot into the roadway, and at the edge of this lip is a long crack where it’s supposed to meet up with the asphalt. This pushes you further into the narrow curb lane, where the many motorists don’t really like to share with you. The cost of fixing this in the context of the City’s SBL pilot project would be prohibitive and would require NCC cooperation.

    That’s enough brain dump for now. cheers.

  2. Avatar Image

    Dave said on February 24, 2011

    Hey Charles, thanks for the dump! The “isn’t it redundant” notion in my post was almost rhetorical – but thanks for laying out the situation a little more clearly.

    I see what you’re saying about the Wellington location – almost more of a tourist/recreational pathway than a real commuter choice.

    The Bay-Portage section sounds like it would be useful though. I’m eager to see what comes of it!

  3. Kathryn Hunt said on February 24, 2011

    I’ve had to take that chunk of Wellington before. Mostly if I’m heading across the river, or if I don’t want to take, say, Albert/Scott heading west (which is not fun, especially at rush hour with the bus glut.) And it’s really *hard* to get on any of the bike paths from downtown! I’ve gotten so lost and sidetracked trying to find my way onto the bike path down near the bridge… if I had a street lane it would be way easier. And your only other option, if you’re trying to get to Hintonburg or Westboro, is something cluttery and chaotic like Somerset. I’m really, really curious to see how this would work. (Hey, and it might make the condo people very happy if it works out that you can take the Laurier SBL to Bay, then scoot over on Bay to a segregated lane on Wellington…. they wanted to have the lane stop at Bay, right?)