Successful First Winter Family Bike Parade in Ottawa

The first Ottawa Winter Family Bike Parade on January 22, 2012 attracted 50 cyclists, here posing in front of Ottawa City Hall. Commuter cycling is gaining popularity in Canada. – Photo: Paul Clarke

So today was the day: Ottawa’s first ever winter bike parade. If you are not from Ottawa, you might think: “Big Deal”. But Ottawa happens to be the seconds coldest capital in the world (after Ulanbataar in Mongolia), so planning a bike ride in Ottawa made a lot of people think that we were out of our minds. But that’s just it. Today we showed that cycling in winter doesn’t mean you are out of your mind, as approximately fifty people showed up at noon to participate in the bike ride on Laurier Ave.

Parade Organiser Risa - Photo: Simone Rivers

We had hoped for thirty participants but as many as fifty showed up. You know how it goes: you promised to come, you look out of the window, you check the temperature and you think: “Nah, maybe not”. Not in Ottawa: people did show up despite a temperature at noon of -12C (-10F) and a wind chill of -17C (-1 F).

President of CfSC being interviewed by the press - Photo: Alex deVries

We gathered at a small parking lot on Laurier at Percy. We always inform the press about our activities, but we didn’t expect that they’d actually come out. Several of us were interviewed and after a few instructions we rolled down Laurier Ave. As Laurier is only about 1.7 km long, we decided to do the run twice. There was a colourful collection of bikes, even two recumbent bikes; some couples brought their kids in the trailer and Kathleen cycled on her extra long bike. Councillor Fleury (Vanier) was hardly recognisable with his balaclava on, and we had to lend him a winter bike, as he isn’t (wasn’t?) a winter cyclist.

Winter cycling in Ottawa - Photo: Paul Clarke

I spent a year in the Dutch army (mandatory, at a time that we thought the Russians would occupy The Netherlands. Turned out they could barely keep their vehicles running, let alone occupy us), so I was trained in driving in convoys, even though I never drove anything bigger than a VW van. The odd thing in convoys is, that the first one needs to drive only 40 k/h, but the guys in the back have to drive 70k/hr to keep up. So as the designated leader of the pack, I cycled as slow as possible. We had so many people, that we didn’t all make it through one traffic cycle though.

We had our group picture taken at City Hall and then we all went inside for hot apple cider, served by councillors Wilkinson and Hobbs and board member Alayne McGregor. Councillor Hobbs also provided us with cookies, a really nice gesture. City staff Robin Bennett and Colin Simpson were there and Alex Culley was showing of the new 2012 Ottawa bike map which is now available at bike stores for only $2 each.

Apple cider and cookies were waiting for the cyclists - Photo: Urban Commuter

And if you think that cyclists are crazy to go outside at -12C, here is a picture I took on my way home from the path along the Rideau canal: many more went out skating today. Which shows you that low temperatures don’t deter Ottawans to go outside. If only the bike lanes were a bit better maintained.

Relatively clean Multi Use Pathways and thousands of people out at -10C (wind chill -15C) - Photo: Urban Commuter

You’d think that biking from A to B and a glass of cider to top it off is a piece of cake, but many people are involved to make an event happen. Just ask Risa…

Sam and Risa and Charles Akben-Marchand (office of Councillor Holmes). Risa was instrumental is getting the Winter Parade off the ground - Photo: Paul Clarke.

A big shout out to:
Risa, CfSC board member in charge of the event
Simone for making the posters for the event
Bridgehead for donating the apple cider
Councillor Hobbs for the cookies
Councillors Chernushenko, Hobbs, Fleury and Wilkinson for splitting the cost for the rent of the Jean Pigott Hall
Alex Culley for coordination inside City Hall, Karen for picking up and dropping off equipment.

And of course thanks to the press, the bloggers and Twitterati to get the word out. We are not sure who donated the hummus and pita, but it was very much appreciated.

VP of CfSC Alex deVries and President of CfSC Hans Moor are making Chair of Transportation Committee's Marianne Wilkinson's day. Indeed, the Dutch are tall!

Here is the Ottawa Citizen link to a brief clip of the event.

Here is the CfSC photostream of the event.

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Beat the Blues with the Family Winter Bike Parade

When I speak to audiences in Canada, I often hear that ‘Canada is too cold for cycling‘. Obviously, that is more of a mindset than a reality. Indeed, there are days that the weather is not really cooperating, but that applies more to the poor road conditions than the temperature. Let’s face it, lots of people are out on snow mobiles, on skates on the canal in Ottawa, or on skies on the slopes of the Rockies or the cross country trails in Gatineau Park. The temperature doesn’t bother all those outdoorsy folks.

Ottawa's Laurier Bike Lane is being cleared during a snowstorm on January 13, 2012 Photo: Urban Commuter Ottawa

During the 56 days winter bus strike a couple of years ago (was it 2008/09?), the only way to get to work for me was taking the bike. I could have walked, but 8 km one way is a bit too much. So I took the bicycle and discovered that cold air didn’t really bother me as much as I had feared, as I generated heat while cycling. If you dress smartly, the body heat stays trapped between several layers of clothes. (I could basically throw the bike out after the winter, but that’s another story.)

To show that winter cycling in Ottawa is achievable, Citizens for Safe Cycling is organising a fun family winter bike ride this Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 through downtown Ottawa. People are asked to gather at Laurier and Percy at noon. From there cyclists will cycle to City Hall, where volunteers are waiting inside to serve free hot cider. The focus is obviously on the fun part, so expect a slow ride; no new speed or distance records will be set. There is the photo opp in front of City Hall, with as many winter cyclists in the picture as possible.

Dress warm and colourful. The weather forecast is promising.

When: January 22, 2012 at noon

Where: Laurier Ave at Percy, Ottawa

Who: Everyone! Councillors Hobbs (“I will bring cookies“), Fleury, Chernushenko, Holmes and Transportation committee chair Wilkinson will be there to cheer and serve cider.

If you have a Facebook account, sign up for the ride, so the organisers have a rough idea how many people are participating and councillor Hobbs can start baking in time. Or email Risa.Sargent@safecycling.ca The counter sits at 30 or so. CfSC is already getting feedback from Singapore, the US and the Netherlands. Read a previous blog on an NCC study on the winter use of pathways here.

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Rain Sensor for Dutch Cyclists – “Braille” for the Viennese Pedestrian

No more seeking shelter in this bus stop for this Dutch family when rain threatens. Picture: Urban Commuter Ottawa

Dutch city of Groningen councillor Karin Dekker activated the first rain sensor in the city with the highest bike modal share in the world. The sensor measures rain and snow. If precipitation is measured, the traffic light cycle changes, so that cyclists get green lights more often. If the test is successful, more bicycle friendly traffic lights will follow in 2012. The rain sensor is already implemented in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant.

When it is raining ánd the temperature is below +10 degrees or with minimal car traffic, cyclists get two or three times the green light instead of only once.

A bike traffic light in Vienna and a sensor for the visually impaired Photo: Urban Commuter

Now in order to have green lights for cyclists, you need traffic lights for cyclists first. Common in places with many cyclists (and likely an extra headache for traffic light programmers), we don’t have them in Ottawa (yet). Anxious to see how they look? The pic on the left is an image of a bike traffic light I took in Vienna, Austria in 2010. The brass blue box on the same pole as the light is designed for the visually impaired: a number of lines indicate how many lanes they are going to cross and if they can expect a street car track.

Can you decipher this sign at an intersection? See below in the text for the answer.

Source rain sensor story: Fietsberaad

The sign reads: Expect a curb, then a street car from the left, three lanes of traffic from the right and at the other end a street car from the right and last but not least another curb! Indeed, only nerds take pics of traffic signals while on holidays….

Whoosh!

Just for the fun of it. Copyright: Urban Commuter Ottawa

You probably read already that Ottawa city staff is designing a bike way through the city. Some will argue that it is yet another example of a waste of tax payer’s money (as if $220,000,000 for the Queensway isn’t), but the reality is, that it will be a long term gain. The idea behind a bike way is to create a safe corridor for cyclists from one end of town to the other end. It will feed commuters into the down town as well as encouraging more people to take their bike to get across town for errands. Or to get around their own neighbourhood for that matter.

The route will start (or finish, depending on your location) in Westboro, passes Hintonburg, goes through down town (Hi Jerry), and hooks up with Sandy Hill and Vanier. It looks like the route might be about 12 kilometres, but likely people will use just segments of the route.

The propose bike route through Ottawa. It connects five neighbourhoods: Westboro, Hintonburg, Centretown, Sandy Hill and Vanier. Picture: Dennis Leung, Ottawa Citizen. In reality Scott/Albert and Laurier don't connect that neatly.

Back in 2006, the Dutch Ministry of Traffic and Water Management, battling ever increasing traffic jams (despite investing in roads), started a project to get (even) more people cycling. One of the ideas was to optimise certain bike routes to bypass traffic jams. Initially five routes were chosen: existing facilities were upgraded, new facilities were added. As you probably know, not many people will cycle more than 7-8 km (about 5 miles) for daily commutes, but the Ministry intended to increase that to 15 km by designing the perfect conditions. In 2008 the government gave another €10 mln (about $13 mln) for two more routes; in 2009 another €21 mln was set aside. In 2010 a total investment of another €80 mln was set aside for sixteen more bike routes.

Zoef logos on the pavement: an existing path that was likely used to tow boats by horses along the Dutch canals. Image: Zoef route website.

Let’s zoom in to one route, the ZOEF route near Delft in the western part and busiest part of the Netherlands. Zoef (pronounced as ‘zoof’) is a a word that expresses speed in Dutch and can be loosely translated with “Whoosh”; it is also an awkward Dutch acronym for Carefree, Unobstructed, Simply Cycling, made up for the project obviously. The route stretches from De Lier, a village west of Delft, through Delft to a village east of Delft called Pijnacker-Nootdorp and is about 16 km (10 miles) long. Although I write village, the villages are really suburbs developed around an existing village, but the focus is very much on the old village core, with main streets developed into full service centres, rather than around soulless box store centres on pristine land.

The west end of the ZOEF route in De Lier, circling a roundabout. Picture: Urban Commuter

The east end of the ZOEF route in Pijnacker along its main street. Picture: Urban Commuter

In a nut shell, it has been a government policy to expand existing villages, but the disadvantage was that they were somewhat isolated from the work centres in the cities. Although trains and buses run very frequently, they were much less frequent than for example city buses and subway lines. This caused a lot of extra traffic on the roads.

Fortunately, the government planners had the foresight to develop new burbs along existing railway lines too and actually added train stations to bring people in and out of cities. But the problem –in a country the size of Nova Scotia with nearly 17 million people- remains that there is just too much traffic. The western part of the country is very much comparable with the GTA in a way. Convincing people to take the bike more often is one of the options to tackle traffic congestion.

At train station Delft Zuid, train and bike routes come together. The red pavement is a segregated bike lane. Picture: Urban Commuter

In order to be successful, a ZOEF route should meet the following three S’s:

Speed: lights are adjusted for cyclists, extra way finders and signs on the path, smooth pavement, removal of unnecessary curves in the road;

Safety: segregated where possible, countdown counters to inform cyclist how long the remaining wait is at a traffic light;

Service: mobile bike repair services (an independent for profit service – if the damage is too big to repair, alternative transport is provided), guarded and unguarded bike storage for those who happen to work along the route.

You may have noticed that neither health care concerns nor environmental concerns play a role, although indirectly the new measures do have a positive effect on these two. I think health care budgets should partly go into promoting cycling and even into cycling infrastructure. It looks like it is too early to measure results on the routes in the Netherlands as routes are still implemented, but first signals indicate that people do appreciate the routes. Research among high school students in the area shows that students first and foremost take the fastest route to school, and that they may not necessarily take a route that is longer but safer. 30% of the cycling students are using the ZOEF route. The other 70% do not use it, because they simply don’t live close to the route or come from another point in the city.

Nervous residents in the Ottawa area usually claim loss of parking space in front of their house as the reason for not implementing bike infrastructure; I tend to refer to Island Park drive, a road without on road parking: it doesn’t appear that house prices are suffering, in fact it is one of the more expensive neighbourhoods.

So let’s see what Whoosh could stand for:

• Westboro
• Hintonburg
• On to
• Ottawa
• Sandy Hill and
• Hemlock.

A year ago, I gave an interview to Sandy Hill Community newspaper: “Time for a Queensway for Cyclists“. I am glad to see this route is going to be a reality soon; it will definitely notch Ottawa up the list of bicycle friendly cities in North America once again.

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Sources:

• Filevrij: www.fietsfilevrij.nl/over_fiets_filevrij/over_fiets_filevrij.php (in Dutch)
• Zoefroute.nl: www.zoefroute.nl/ (in Dutch)
• Map: www.fietsfilevrij.nl/routes-kmz/DeZOEF-route.kmz (opens in Google Maps)
• Urban Commuter Photo Library
• Whoosh! logo designed with Open Office and GIMP running on Ubuntu 10.10

Rethinking Sparks Street: 7 Necessary Changes to Bring Back the Spark

Grote Markt Straat, The Hague: how Sparks Street could look like. Note that the buildings are not really interesting, but there is a large Department Store. The pavement for cyclists is different, but not raised or lowered compared with the side walks (source: Google Street view)

I used to walk more or less the same loop during my lunch time hour and Sparks Street was mostly included. But since the Laurier bike Lane is in place, I have changed my route and abandoned Sparks. Laurier is livelier, and with the bike lane in place, there is not only more to see in terms of cyclists, there are also some nice restaurants. The Persian Express has become a hang out for meetings for me as they offer nice food for a relatively low price (all you can eat buffet) and they have a three season terrace. Presse Café opened a few weeks ago on Laurier and is another interesting spot for a coffee.

"Happy Holidays from all retailers in the Sparks Street Mall"

But back to Sparks. A lot has been written about it, but little happens. A few years ago, half of the horrible metal structures, blocking the view anyway, were taken out. If it was up to me, the rest -and the concrete foundations- could go too, they “just so don’t belong” there. The NCC has incorporated Sparks as one of the areas that needs revitilising before 2067. Hopefully, I can participate in the 200th birthday of Canada in 2067, when I am 104 years old. It is possible.

Warm and welcoming: lovely street scape at the Sparks Street Mall.

Last winter, I posted a picture from Sparks, taken days before Christmas. It wasn’t a great picture, but this year the picture was even bleaker. I took a few pics earlier in the season and it appears that there doesn’t seem to be much initiative anymore. The Jazz bar is now a gym, International Clothiers, not really the crown juwel though, is gone, but at least Bridgehead saw the potential in a nice building. It appears to be successful.

It is too bad that the CBC building is so terribly uninviting: it could have been such a nice open concept, particapatory, walk in, lunch time discuss open mike, open studio concept with a grand welcoming entrance on Sparks. Instead, you have to scramble on a three feet wide side walk on Queen St. to find the entrance; the Sparks St. exit is basically the emergency exit for Radio Canada smokers, huddling together near the east side of the building. I don’t want to see smokers: I want to see Lucy van Oldenbarneveldt live! (She has very historic roots by the way, as one of her great, great, great grand fathers was likely Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Dutch statesman who played an important role in the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain. He was beheaded in 1619: his last words were: “Make it short, make it short”, the exact same words that I am thinking when I am watching Ian Black explaining that it is is one degree colder in Barrhaven than Rockcliffe…).

So here are a few pics for those who don’t know what I am talking about.

Tuesday, December 20th, 1:30 pm. Desolate!

CBC on the left doesn't interact with the public, hiding behind quadraple sound proof panes.

Nice buildings (top), ruined uninspiring anonymous storefronts at street level.

It is getting really bad between Bank and Kent: more and more shop windows are getting covered with milky film, to make sure no one can see what you are selling...on the right, the Bank of Canada.

This is a picture of Grote Markt Straat which I took in February 2011, when I visited The Hague: pedestrians and and cyclists are allowed, cars aren’t (see pic at the top of this post). Cyclists seem to adjust their speed as no one was racing, and pedestrians know to watch out for the cyclists. I didn’t see any angry reactions and it appeared that everyone knew their place on the road. Note the upright position, missing spandex and lack of helmets.

Another Grote Markt scene, note that you are allowed to cycle next to eachother, considered a birth right in the Netherlands, in order to chat (remember, cycling is a social thing too).

Commuters cycling home at the end of the day in Grote Markt Straat with temperatures just above 0 Celsius/32 F.

A woman cycling in the Kerkstraat in the village of "Berkel en Rodenrijs", Netherlands, a shared bike pedestrian space. When I was a kid, this was a street with cars, but it gradually turned into a ped/bike mall. Shoppers come from big city Rotterdam to enjoy small town retail shopping...

...and the kids can safely putter around in that same Kerkstraat. Can't do that at Merivale Road.....

So here are seven points to think about:

Anchors: A good mall has anchors (stores that attract large numbers of people) on both ends, and that is what is missing;

Heritage: Ruined store fronts are terribly uninviting, set some restoration grants aside for improvements;

Eyes on the street: Forbid the horrible film on windows, you can’t look inside nor outside;

Cozier: Design a street that is visually narrower: design creative pavement in several colours with a strip for cyclists in the middle: no they won’t race; the street in Berkel was actually made narrower by allowing stores to build out into the street for a few extra meters;

Views: Unblock the view through the street by removing the metal structures;

Declutter: Remove the concrete foundations, or paint them purple with yellow dots, or zebra stripes, or giants slugs;

Unfence: Get rid of those crazy fences around terraces. Why bother with them? It prevents what exactly? Change the law.

A Christmas wreath on a street light is not going to change the street. As the Dutch expression goes: “Wimpy doctors, stinky wounds”. Bold changes are necessary. With all the condos in the westend of downtown, there is no reason that Sparks St. isn’t livelier. If the store rents are too high, I ‘d say lower them, but the store properties aren’t owned by the NCC. O, and would the Post Office on Sparks and Elgin not be a gorgeous Grand Café? Something like this:

Gerbeaud Café, with its fine stucco work, marble, glistening chandeliers, exotic wood panelling and furniture, is one of the largest of Europe's traditional cafés / © Hungarian Tourist Board

But let’s start with a bike lane a pilot for a year or two. Just paint two lines. It might also attract Bixi bike tourists into Sparks, desparately searching for “I love the NCC” T-shirts.

All pictures by Urban Commuter, except the Google Screenshot and the Gerbeaud Café.

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Ottawa Moves – part 3/3 – Ken Greenberg

Bakfiets girls in Stockholm: easy delivery in the downtown core. Photo: Urban Commuter

Ken Greenberg, Urban Design consultant, who is working on the plans for Bank Street, south of Billings Bridge, spoke in the evening of November 3. Ken started the evening with a video I had never seen before and is worth watching. The animation video from 1958 called Magic Highway USA shows a fantastic conceptual idea by Disney -with somewhat naive optimism- of how the world would look like in the future. I can’t start to describe the many ideas in the video, you have to see it yourself. Note the mention of GPS, large overhead road signs, rear view camera’s and cruise control (setting the recommended speed, albeit not automatically). One remark is wonderfully dated, when the video shows a car splitting in two parts and whizzing off in different directions, with the voice over saying that the “father (is going to) to his office, and the mother and son to the shopping centre“.

The car separates: dad goes to work, mom and the son to the shopping mall

Ken shared a number of interesting insights, referring to Jane Jacobs’, ‘eyes on the street’, showed us that traffic jams in Toronto cause a $6 billion drag on the economy and that high gas prices are worsening the housing crisis in suburbia (who wants to buy a home, which requires you to fill up your gas tank several times a week to get to work), but not in downtown areas, as people have the alternative to walk and cycle to their destinations. Ken explains that cars are obviously not going to disappear; the challenge is to limit the trips (and that is why the Urban Commuter cycles to work, although there is a car in the driveway).

Families start to give up on a car already. This is an Amsterdam family in the down town canal core on a Dutch bakfiets (cargo bike). (note the lack of curbs)

Something I had read about before, which already started to happen in Japan years ago, starts to become more normal here too: ownership of a car -unlike in our (grand)parents generation- is becoming less and less important for someone’s status. In fact, in Japan, a computer is higher on young adults lists than a car. You see the same thing happening in dense places like Amsterdam and Paris or example. People no longer see a car as part of their identity, a very interesting mind shift. No wonder, as CAA/GlobeandMail Drive calculated in 2010: a minivan cost you no less than a 1000 dollars a month in the first four years, if you include all cost, like depreciation. As my teacher taught us in university: depreciation is really the money you have to set aside every month/year in order to buy another car eventually. A painful reality (like having your house reshingled, which cost us $10,000 last week).

Ottawa's vrtu car concept replaces about 7-8 cars on the road as well as saves you about 7500 dollars annually

Ken thinks we are living in exciting times: “we are in the midst of a graceful shift into sustainability” (in fact, when I am typing this, the CBC is running an item on the cost of infrastructure on the National with Peter – overly dramatic- Mansbridge). Ken noted that civil society has to step up and give the politicians the cover to show they are listening to their constituents. In other words, write your councillor that you want to see a sustainable city, with numerous bike and walk facilities. Trust me, you don’t need to convince most councillors that building more roads goes nowhere, as the cost for building and upkeep of a road network  is beyond any city’s budget eventually. Road building and maintainance is financially unsustainable in an economy of stagflation that moves sideways at the most, so be prepared for more taxes, levies and tolls.

A taste of summer at the Parkdale Market in Hintonburg.

Ken really liked what is happening with the revitilisation of Hintonburg, Ottawa. As mentioned before, he is working on Bank Street, south of Billings Bridge. Councillor Clark has already asked for better bike infrastructure on/near Billings Bridge (even though it is not his ward, but it is good to see that councillors look beyond their wards). Ken closed with mentioning road diets being a great idea and he noted the success of Hintonburg’s village within a city concept.

Woodroffe Ave in Ottawa just being repaved to accomodate an ever increasing number of cars, which eventually end up in a parking garage somewhere downtown at 17 pop a day.

One problem we have in a country with a lot of space though, is that land is cheap outside the burbs. So builders build ‘affordable‘ housing. It is then the city’s problem to deal with the clogged Woodroffe Ave’s and Innes Roads of the world. In reality, the cost of widening the existing arteries should be considered in the cost of the housing in and beyond the burbs. Then it will show the real cost of those affordable houses. It may not be so appealing anymore to live in the country all of a sudden.

One thing is clear: mobility is going to cost us more. Unfortunately, many of our roads weren’t upgraded in the good times, so don’t hold your breath for the next years. I am pretty sure city council would love to have a moratorium on building new roads for the next three years. A few kilometers of road easily cost between 50 and 100 million dollars, so that would be the easiest money saved in order to keep the taxes low, as demanded by constituents.

All pics by Urban Commuter except Disney and Vrtucar screenshots.

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Ottawa Moves – part 2/3 – Andrew Wiley Schwarz

After Gil Peñolosa’s talk at Ottawa Moves the night before , it was time for Andrew Wiley Schwarz on a sunny Thursday morning, November 3 to talk about bike and pedestrian infrastructure in New York City. Andrew works for the New York City Department of Transportation as an Assistant Commissioner. His talk was a frank case study and lessons learned on New York City’s changes in the urban landscape.

From studies, NYC discovered that there were more pedestrian movements than they’d thought there were; they also learned that parks don’t connect in NYC (sounds familiar?). People moved around in isolated areas instead of covering distances. Not good if you want people to leave the car at home a bit more. Andrew talked extensively about the project to close Times Square for cars; they had calculated that the part of Broadway around Times Square could be closed without having an impact of traffic flow.

An interesting remark he made was that ‘the day you make a change in public space, people have to understand why you make the change” so the plan was to put out chairs immidiately after the closure and organise a party. It turned out, Andrew’s crew wouldn’t be able get the chairs out in time after they blocked the square off, as it would take the city’s procurement office six weeks to get four hundred chairs. Bank Street BIA (“we love bikes, but not in our front yard“) take note: the local business community chipped in and low and behold, the next day the place was covered with four hundred foldable chairs and the square had its street party. It has been a big success.

Retail up 100%

Today, 74% of the New Yorkers love the new set up. Retail is up 100%, the Disney Store moved back in (yes, that is  considered a success) and sub concessions at the square bring in revenue to organise other events. (So what is wrong with Sparks St, it is the street or is it the people?)

screenshot of Times Square from above, note Broadway's painted pavement, which stretches over 4-5 blocks.

So how do Andrew and his friends roll the programs out? They basically ‘wait’ for neighbourhoods to apply for support for an idea, so they are guaranteed support from the citizens. Andrew shared lots of pictures from New York’s applied changes.  Activities on NYC wish list are a way finding and signage system. Andrew stated that awareness of cycling is #1 for safe cycling.

There was a question from the public about the back lash against all this healthy improvements for walking and cycling. It appears the news on those protests is greatly exaggerated. Andrew explained that the press needs to have two sides of a story, but that the reality is that “the polls that are coming out show routinely solid support for the bike lane program”. Community involvement is key though, he mentioned.

Crowd sourcing

screenshot of the crowd sourcing NYC bike share program

NY is also introducing a bike rental program in 2012. No less than 10,000 bikes will roll in NY streets soon, supported by 600 stations. The city set up a cool crowd sourcing website, asking the public where the stations should be placed. You can see the proposed stations real time on a special bike share website. NYC’s bike share is run by Alta Bicycle Share, an affiliate of Alta Planning (of Mia Birk and Portland fame). Alta Bicycle Share estimates that more than 200 jobs will be created by locally sourcing maintenance and support for the system.

Screenshot of Ottawa Biking Problems by Alex deVries

This is the stuff I like in Web 2.0. Similar to New York, we have our own Ottawa Biking Problems website, with citizens involvement; it is where citizens have real input in decision making, without having to take a day off to go to council meetings to make a five minute plea. Although the Ottawa website is run by volunteer CfSC board member Alex deVries, city staff does use the cyclists’ requests. Update: City councillor Holmes would like to see a simular site developed for pedestrian problems in Ottawa.

Bureaucrats & Liability

Nancy Schepers (Ottawa Deputy City Manager, Infrastructure) just happened to leave the room when the Q & A started, but looked over her shoulder and smiled when Eric Darwin of Westsideaction fame expressed worries about nervous bureaucrats, while pointing to a picture with a woman sitting on a chair, reading a book, leaning backwards on the two legs of the chair along a road, feet on a planter. “In Ottawa, bureaucrats would worry she’d tip backwards, citizens suing the city for not having the chairs bolted down, or being nervous for the chair ending up on the road, thereby denting a car”, he commented not without irony, referring to liability fears. Andrew jokingly pointed out that “NY has a special locker for them”. More seriously, he explained he does sit down with city lawyers and insurance companies to analyse the risk and basically said that the city does have to accept that there is a certain amount of risk in what a city does. They do look what is absolutely necessary though but avoid going overboard.

When drivers get out of their car along this Amsterdam canal, they have a one foot margin of error. It is an accepted risk that you could fall into the canal; no one would file a law suit if it happens. In fact, I have parked my car many times along canals, you get used to getting out of your car, holding your laptop really close to you.

If Amsterdam would have to worry about their canals, all canals would have to have six feet fences around them; instead, they leave it to the citizens’ own responsibility to look after themselves. Rightly so.

Next blog on Ken Greenberg, Urban Design consultant, who is working on the plans for Bank street, south of Billings Bridge, who spoke in the evening.

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Ottawa Moves – part 1/3 – Gil Peñolosa: 8-80 cities

a screenshot of 8-80cities website

On November 2 and 3, the City of Ottawa organised a two day series of speakers and work shop on DOMO, the Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay. As DOMO is a bit of non-descriptive acronym, it is now called “Downtown Moves”. And moving it will. With the new Light Rail eventually in place, thousands of people will appear above ground at the same time, only to find three feet side walks in many places. It is hard to believe that a complete tunnel and underground track, including stations, will be ready before the 150th anniversary of Canada in 2017, when turning a traffic circle into a roundabout at Prince of Wales takes about four months.

Nelson Edwards, a very amicable –and very tall, he could be Dutch, but than he would be Van der Edwards- City of Ottawa employee who works in the community planning and urban design department of our city, was in charge of the two days. He invited no less than three speakers to inspire city staff, the public and the city councillors to think about 21st century solutions for a 19^th century downtown.

Gil Peñolosa – 8-80 Cities

First out on November 2 was Gil Peñolosa. Gil is the executive director of Toronto based 8-80 cities, a non-profit organisation (which used to be called “Walk and Bike for Life”) with a goal:

to contribute to the creation of vibrant cities and healthy communities, where residents live happier and enjoy great public places. We promote walking and bicycling as activities and urban parks, trails and public spaces as a way to fulfill our goal.

Gil markets himself as a “liveable city advisor and social marketing strategist” and as “Inspirational Keynotes and Consulting”. 8-80cities partners are Guadalajara, International Sports and Culture Association, Project for Public Spaces, W.H.O., American Trails, American City Parks, Gehl Architects and Alta Planning. The only Canadian partners appear to be the Ontario Ministry of Health and Green Communities.

I have heard Gil speaking before. He gives a meticulously well timed rapid fire presentation, laced with no less than about 300 PowerPoint slides in 1 hour and 15 minutes with examples from all over the world. Gil must have done this hundreds of times as his words match his slides down to the second; I admire him for staying so excited. He appears to fly all over the world as an inspirational speaker, and this time he just returned from Australia.

To drive his message home, Gil uses the EARTH acronym, where E =Environment, A = (economic) Activity, R=Recreation, T=Transportation and H=Health. He talks about climate change, transporation and pollution, our car based society, the need for people in public space, bicycling and walking for everybody, leadership and vision and many other aspects of life that we should change in order to keep our cities liveable. Gil brings back wonderful examples of what cities have been doing over the last 20-30 years. But…

Two hats

…what is never really clear to me is which hat Gil is wearing. He shows lots of images from all over the world: Australia, Korea, Vietnam, Mexico, US, France, Columbia and Denmark to name but a few, but fails to mention the number one cycling country in the world: the Netherlands, which is an omission that shouldn’t happen. Copenhagen is brought forward in a special part of his presentation, as a great example (which it is) but Gil is also a senior advisor of Gehl architects, a Danish architecture firm in Copenhagen (which he doesn’t hide by the way).

Sitting in the public, I don’t know if I am listening to Gil the non-profit executive director who should show an objective view of what is going on in the world of walking and cycling and public space, or Gil the sales rep, who is getting business in for Copenhagen based Gehl architects by showing great Danish examples and being paid by local governments to come and talk. That is a bit unfortunate, as he has a good message. In my own presentations, I find that local Canadian examples resonate more than ideas from the other side of the planet.

Working on different continents, 8-80 Cities and Gehl Architects are united by a simple and shared idea about public places –places should be built for people. If you are interested in a project in your community, you should take a look at Make a Place for People. The community chips in as well as 8-80 cities, Gehl and the Ministry of Health of Ontario.

More examples

If Gil is talking as 8-80 cities, I would have liked to see much more examples of his work in Ontario. Gil barely touches on the improvements (how does council react, are there ideas that are implemented, how was the public response, how do planners accept his ideas?) that 8-80 cities has worked on, so in that sense the talk was a bit disappointing for those who are a bit more involved in this topic already, know the Denmark, Portland, New York stories and expected an 8-80 cities talk. Those who heard Gil for the first time did enjoy it.

At home I checked what 8-80cities actually does and discovered 33 studies, which are hard to find on the site. There is some interesting material on the website that he really should talk about too and advertise all over the home page of his web site. It is a bit too much Gil on the home page currently. Interesting, that under the heading ‘cycling’ the San Francisco Bay cycling association is mentioned, but not our own Ottawa CfSC or Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition. The website needs a bit of a refresh I am afraid.

I won’t summarise his talk, as it is simply a lot he touches on, but here is Gil’s speech in Vancouver in 2008, which carries the same message. There was not much Ottawa related content, someone mentioned afterwards, but with so much travelling across the planet, one has to standardise one’s talk a bit.

Everything is related to everything

Gil concludes his talk in Ottawa that: “everything is related to everything”. Who can disagree with that? OK, that is not fair, he also told us that you need leaders with a vision and do-ers, who take the bull by the horn and get things going. In Gil’s words: “We need hundreds and hundreds of Janette Sadik-Kahns“, which segways neatly into the next speaker, as Janette is a Commissioner at DOT in New York and the next speaker’s boss.

Next blog on Ottawa Moves later in the week, with Andrew Wiley-Schwarz from NY, NY.

Cycling to a Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands

Canadian War cemetery at the Holterberg in Rijssen-Holten, the Netherlands, the country's second largest war cemetery

My parents went through World War 2 in the Netherlands, but were too young to really remember. They were 6 and 9 when the war was over. My mom remembers planes dropping ‘Swedish whitebread” and my dad remembers they had to leave the house as the Germans were at one end and the Allied forces at the other end; my dad’s family was in the line of fire. Nowadays, our biggest worries are empty cell phone batteries and status updates on Twitter.

My dad and mom in 2011. It rains only 6% of the time in the Netherlands, but always when you happen to be on the bike.

Last summer, we visited the Netherlands. It may sound odd, but I haven’t seen much of the country, although I lived there for 35 years. The fact of the matter is, that the weather is not always cooperative for a summer holiday, so many Dutch families go south to enjoy the Mediterranean sun. It is not that we don’t like our own country, it is just that you don’t want to take the risk to sit in a tent in the rain on a muddy campsite with grumpy people who played Risk and Monopoly for four days in a row.

Sudbury, ON may have its "Big Nickel", Rijssen has its "Big Wooden Shoe"

In June, to celebrate my mom and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary, we rented a chalet in the east of the Netherlands in Twente County. Twente is a lovely area to cycle with 1000 year old landscapes, beautiful old farms, horses, quaint villages and the wooden shoe museum.

Twente's quiet narrow country roads are a great place for kids to cycle (with a little help form his dad). This is a road, not a bike lane

There is also one of the very, very few hills in the Netherlands. Rijssen-Holten is one of the bigger places in the area, with a bike modal share of 38% for trips under 7.5 km. Are you listening Copenhagenise? It has 28,000 inhabitants and lies in the Province of Overijssel. We rented gorgeous sturdy bikes and set out for a bike tour which included the Holterberg.

Not every bike path in the Netherlands is 10 ft wide and paved with red asphalt.

The Holterberg, a 65 meter high hill (200 ft) near the small town of Holten, is part of a National Park in the Netherlands. It is basically a hill with a few bike paths and one car route crossing it. At the bottom, retired people stop for coffee in one of the several restaurants. Cyclists and motorbikes tackle the hill on a sunny day. At the south end of the Holterberg, one can find the second largest war cemetery in the Netherlands, the “Canadian War Cemetery Holten”, with 1400 mostly Canadian graves in a beautiful park like setting.

Meticulously maintained, this cemetery is a piece of Canadian soil in the Netherlands

How did 1400 Canadian soldiers end up in Twente? The Canadians were on their way north in 1944 from France and Belgium but got stuck at the major rivers in the Netherlands that run east-west. They had to sit out the winter of 1944/45 before they could push further north. You may remember the book and the movie ‘A bridge too far’ (for those under 20: a book is a stack of about 250 pages or more, glued together on one side; it is like a really long Facebook page) which tells about the attempts to cross the river to head further north, to liberate the northeast of the country. After liberating the Netherlands, they’d travel further east into Germany towards Berlin. There was heavy fighting between Canadians and German troops in the Twente area for a few days, a month or so before the war was over. After the dust had settled, Commander of the 2nd Canadian Army, Lieutenant General G.G. Simonds, decided that the Holterberg would be a fitting place for the soldiers’ bodies, so a piece of land was set aside on the Holterberg. Canada owns the land now, so there is a small Canadian enclave in the Netherlands. Literally.

The information centre was about to open when we were there and should be open by now

80,000 people visit the cemetery annually nowadays. To accommodate texts, photographs, personal stories and audio-visual presentations, and provide long overdue wash room facilities, an info centre was opened this summer (Youtube video clip) by Princess Margriet, the Dutch princess who was born in Ottawa during the war.

On May 4, Dutch Remembrance Day, a ceremony is held for the fallen soldiers. Children play a big part in the ceremony, so they learn what freedom of speech and freedom of movement is all about and that young guys from far away sacrified their lives so that we can basically say what we want and go where we like.

There are still a few flock of sheep in the area

So next time you cell phone batteries are dead, or Twitter is out of service, think of it as a temporary inconvenience.

Sources:

• Wikipedia
• More images of the Canadian Cemetery
• More images of the Information Centre
• All pictures by the Urban Commuter

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Un Peu de Paris au Marché Parkdale

Dan Quayle would approve of the sign......

It has been a really nice autumn in Ottawa, and last fin de la semaine (Michael: that translates to ‘weekend’) was no exception. Sunny crisp weather, temperatures I wished we could have throughout the winter. It makes cycling so much more pleasant. Often we take the bicycle to Parkdale Market. It is one of those succesfully revitilised places, where an open air market, a park with a wade pool and a small stage make the area feel welcoming. It is also cycling and pedestrian friendly.

There is a plan to build an enormous high rise at the north end, where the one story art gallery is located, but I cannot imagine that would ever happen as it would completely ruin the village within a city concept. It will take sun light away, make the place windier and unattractive. Although I support intensification of the city, Parkdale Market should not have a 20 story tower right at the edge. I can see a six story building, with the four top stories a wee set back, with small terraces at the bottom – that side would be south facing- and terraces could be open well into November.

You've got to dream big to make Parkdale Market look French, but why not? Note that all chairs face the sidewalk for people watching: 12 chairs, 4 tables and 1 purple awning do the trick. And two black boards. And no silly fence.

With a bit rich fantasy, Parkdale Market has the potential to become a bit of Paris in Ottawa and it shouldn’t be spoiled by buildings, sticking out like a sore thumb. Here are a few pictures from October 23.

Don't squash the Parkdale Market!

Nothing beats a real pumpkin

Local produce is somewhat relative, but Mountain, ON is just east of Kemptville, south of Ottawa.

Ahhhh, do I smell French onion soup already?

"Le canard qui rit