Monthly Archives: June 2011

Popular bike and ped route “locked shut”

Several years ago a gate was installed at the north end of Preston, where it crosses NCC land. There is a paved path (actually a derelict bit of the transitway from pre-1980′s) that leads to a legal marked crossing of the current transitway and then out the Ottawa River bike paths.

The gate was installed by contractors during water main construction a few years ago. On Monday, it was locked shut.

I went out Monday evening to view the scene. I met cyclists coming up from the River, having crossed the transitway, and were then forced to return and recross the transitway to search for an alternate route in the Booth Street area. These two cyclists actually returned to cycle along the transitway itself to get to Booth:

Before I could put my camera away, three more cyclists approached from the Preston side. Here they are perched straddling the centre line of Preston since the road is designed only for motorists, with a right and left turn lanes, but no straight through lane for cyclists:

They approached the gate in some confusion, as no signage indicated why the gate is suddenly closed and locked. They eventually headed off west along Albert. I hope they didn’t try to get to the River via the Bayview O-Train station since the paths from the Station going north the few hundred feet to the River have also been well marked by OC Transpo with NO TRESPASSING signs and their Enforcers will do a Dukes-of-Hazard pursuit in their squad cars to stop you.

For those unfamiliar with the area, the Preston extension crosses the transitway at this legal marked crossing:

As it happens, I was traversing this crossing late last week when I came across a bevy of City employees at the site, snapping photos and gesticulating. I asked what was going on.

According to one story, they were planning to close the access during Bluesfest, rather than put a patrol of crossing guards there. The route is a popular access route to the west gate at Bluesfest; closing this route will enforce a very long walk around, or illegal crossings elsewhere. According to this version, the sponsors of Bluesfest will pay for traffic patrol for cars but not for pedestrians. (Perhaps we should  therefore all drive to Bluesfest??- ed). Could Mr Monahan confirm this?

The gentlemen on the site the day I came across them were not so forthcoming. They insisted they were there to “improve pedestrian safety”. Not being born yesterday, I asked if this meant they were going to close the crossing. They would not deny it, repeatedly asking “where did I hear that?”. I pointed out it was a legal crossing, and if they closed it they would need additional patrols to “improve safety” at old Broad Street crossing, and near the Bayview Station, since crowds have learned from previous years that there is a crossing here.

Sensing some adversity in my posture regarding the crossing, they folded their arms and, aw shucks, patting their bellies,  denied having business cards handy. But one did claim to be the Director of Operations for the O-Train.

I did not expect them to close the path a week before Canada Day crowds, and so far before Bluesfest.

IMO, this is a ham-fisted and ass-backwards way to control a crowd “problem”. Shutting the main legal crossing of the transitway, sans signs, simply redirects the crossers to Broad and other sections of the transitway where it is darker and they are unexpected.

I also note that in previous years, the organizers and City held a planning meeting well before Bluesfest, to discuss crowd control and parking control. I did notice that I was not invited this year (if a meeting was held) (I normally go as head of the local community association). I should have figured something was up. It seems the ole spring it on ‘em when it’s too late to make changes approach still thrives at OC Transpo and some branches of the City.

There are alternatives to posting security guards at the crossing all evening. They could, for example, advise buses to slow to a crawl at the site (pretend its a road maintenance or bore hole exercise…) and not post guards. Or put up a temporary traffic light ( crowds of lubricated pedestrians obeying a stop light in the middle of field might be iffy). Funny enough, OC Transpo has no problem paying dozens of extra drivers to stand around on the site for a full shift of overtime waiting for the concert to end so they can do a single #95 run …

Just yesterday, Mayor Watson spoke at the Cycling Summit, inviting cyclists and pedestrians to pester politicians with their issues, so don’t be shy, here is his email: Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca.

Ontario Bike Summit, Day 1

The Ontario Bike Summit started Monday at the Museum of Nature, and continues on Tuesday.

Bug Me, says Watson: What’s a public meeting without politicians to speak? This meeting opened with an abundance of them. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson spoke of the increased volume of cyclists (155,000 in May) and their increased visibility. Speaking of the Laurier Separated Bike Lane (SBL) he made it clear that he understood some cyclists did not like the project, but “they don’t have to use it”. It is designed to offer a safer route for cyclists, to encourage more cycling, and to facilitate tourists who cycle from hotels to the pathways. He reiterated that it is a trial project, and that if doesn’t work, or the problems predicted by business owners is too much, than it can easily be picked up and the street repainted. In the context of the whole city budget, it isn’t a big deal.

The Mayor was at his populist best, and reminded attendees that politicians do what the people want (a variation on the squeaky wheel fable) so don’t be shy (his words) to write and tell the mayor that we want more cycling facilities. If there’s enough demand, the City will provide. His email address is Jim.Watson@ottawa.ca.

Marie Lemay, NCC, reminded us that it was about 40 years ago that the NCC pioneered bike paths and bike Sundays. While she portrayed this as a pioneering effort (all thanks, I might add, to St Douglas of Fullerton) I thought it came across as a double-edged sword, since post-Fullerton the NCC returned to its pretty-view-for-the-motorist mode.

Lemay acknowledged that the world has moved beyond recreational cycling, facilities for which the NCC provides in abundance, and now has to address utility cycling and commuting cycling. She mentioned the all-day use of NCC parking lots for park-and-bike. I wonder how they are going to enforce that, so that lots such as the one beside Tunney’s Pasture don’t simply become all-day free parking zones for cubicle dwellers in the Pasture.

She emphasized that coming issues for cycling include winter clearance, since so many cities have established that a climate like Ottawa’s is not a reason to stop cycling in winter. As a society, we need to recognize the health benefits of cycling and active transportation. And, like Watson, she encouraged attendees to keep pushing politicians while the time is right and the topic is hot.

It is a virtuous cycle: more facilities brings out more users who demand more facilities. (It is, after all, how we got to have so many roads everywhere, and will work for cycle facilities since planners widely acknowledge that the cheapest cost per user is cycling infrastructure).

Two of her slides:

Yasir Naqvi, MPP emphasized that cars and motorists are still a huge majority, and they are vocal in expressing their concerns to their MPP’s. Cyclists therefore cannot assume that government is doing what they want, they have to compete with motorists for dollars spent. “Speak up”, he advised, echoing the previous politicos.

Wim Geerts, Ambassador from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and well-known and popular friend to cyclists in Ottawa and Canada, noted that it took The Netherlands forty years to fix their auto-mania, but that having made all the mistakes and learned what works, we can do it much faster by simply copying what they did (he has a list of Dutch consultants handy). He emphasized the importance of proper segregated cycling infrastructure and the culture shift to prioritizing active modes of transport and not motorists. He also noted the average journey to work in the Netherlands is  the same as in Ottawa (8 km) so don’t buy the argument that European cities are denser or smaller.

The first keynote speaker was Dr Andrew Pipe from Ottawa U. The good heart doctor’s job is to help people die young as late as possible. Preventive medicine is more than fridge magnets, it is reducing the risk factors before the problem worsens. In his view, sedentary lifestyle caused by unwalkable suburbs is a major contributor to obesity and early death. He pointed out that TB was beaten like this:

Note that the disease death rate is plummeting before it is even identified by science, and continues to drop for a hundred years, before drugs and medical treatments became available. It was beaten through geographic detective work: Dr Snow mapped the incidence of the disease, and identified the well at the centre of the outbreaks, and went out and sabotaged the pump. No dirty water– disease over. No committees, government panels, priority setting exercises, or consultation. As a society, says Dr Pipe, we talk too much and take action too little.

Epidemics can never be treated one person at a time. Obesity and diabetes have to be treated by public health measures that affect a whole population. He noted that the City of Ottawa, predominately white and upper middle class, is much more active (due to widespread availability of cycling and walking facilities) than surrounding Ottawa valley communities. Those who flee the city to the healthy countryside promptly die quicker:  the best place, with the best numbers, a virtual cardiovascular Shangri-la, is urban Ottawa.

Inactivity is the root of the problem. Inactivity is directly associated with increased automobile use, which is associated with suburban, exurban, and rural living. Inactivity is second only to smoking as the biggest root of the problem.

He pointed out that we deliberately design our growing cities and small towns to be auto dependant. He blamed ”plans”  (read “planners”) for causing elevated disease levels. We shape our physical communities, and in turn, they shape us. Form follows function. Continuing our urban policies of the last 40 years is not only wrong, it is delusional behaviour because we know its wrong!

There are two causes of disease: pathological  and political.

Dr Pipes proposes a popsicle test for determining the health of communities:  a kid should be able to walk to a corner store, get a popsicle, and get home before it melts.

The second keynote speaker in the morning session was Dr Rodney Tolley, of Walk21. Note that he will be speaking again on Wednesday evening at 7pm in the Champlain room at City Hall, all are welcome to attend.

Dr Tolley explained that what is good for walking is usually good for cycling. Walking has numerous beneficent features: it is inclusive (we see and interact with our neighbours and other citizens), it builds community cohesion, promotes personal security, provides freedom for children and the elderly who are denied mobility in automobile-centred sprawl, promotes road safety, and is cheaper than catering to autos to boot!

Dr Tolley does a great parody, he calls it  the modern “anti-people planning manual”, which supposedly directs engineers and planners and politicians on how to deliver the worst results. He then moved on to outline the peak car theory:

As fuel prices rise, people look for alternatives. Peak oil is a theory with numerous adherents; he postulated that peak cars may also be happening, as people decide cars and commuting are not worth it:

We need to fix streets to attain the five C’s:

And we need to adjust our urban planning processes to repair sprawl and make suburbs walkable and mobile for young and the old, not just motorists. The “silver tsunami” of our ageing population means we have to re-engineer our suburbs to be lifetime cities, not mid-life cities. Also needing repair are urban arterials that blight neighborhoods in the effort to cater to rush hour commuters (Hello Bronson!):

Dr Tolley pointed out that we need  good branding to make walking sexy again. Thus the arrival of new names, such as active transportation, livable streets, smart growth, iwalk, etc. which serve to counteract the pro-automobile bias built into the language over the last six decades : road “improvements”, reducing “congestion”, improving “safety” (for whom?), moving more vehicles instead of moving people, promoting growth,  ”freedom to move”, etc. etc.

Colin Simpson spoke about the origins and progress of the Laurier Separated Bike Lanes (SBL) which caused lots of excitement from a number of out-of-town attendees. It made me realize how quickly we take this initiative for granted, and focus on its flaws rather than its benefits.

Andy Clark, from the League of American Bicyclists (www.bikeleague.org) emphasized the need to act on simple solutions. What took Copenhagen 40 years took Portland 15 years. Building on their knowledge, NYC leaped forward in five years and Seville, the most recent big-city convert, has moved from predictions of automotive disaster to an active transportation model in just 3 years.

A session on cycle tourism noted that there is abundant evidence that tourists interested in cycling stay longer and spend more than motoring tourists. For all bike projects, a business case and followup data collection is vital to selling the benefits.  It is important to have shovel-ready projects and ideas at hand in advance of elections and other stimulus spending sprees.

Bike tourists can be categorized and measured in three categories: shoe string cyclists often camp or stay at hostels, economy tourists stay at B&B’s or hotels, and comfort tourists (often silver-haired) like organized trips with themes (vinyards!) and luxury accommodation. There are also event rides and theme tours centred on specific historic or cultural themes.

Ginny Sullivan, from the Adventure Cycling Association, emphasized the need for integrated marketing, branding, consistent image, and outreach to users and beneficiaries (eg the businesses along a route). 

John Scott from Essex County noted that they encouraged new B&B’s along the key bike route and saw 75 new ones appear to take advantage of the cycling traffic.

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The Ontario Bike Summit continues Tuesday at 8am at the Museum of Nature, Ottawa.

The Citizen coverage is at http://cycle.ottawacitizen.com/featured/bike-friendly-ottawa-still-has-work-to-do

Champlain (de-)forest realities

I went on a walking tour Sunday morning in the Champlain Park neighborhood. This west side group of streets runs north of the transitway, from the Mosque at Northwestern to Island Park Drive. The neighborhood began as a cottage area on the floodplain of the River (the railway tracks, now transitway trench, marked the high water mark of the floodplain). Later, small houses were built in the 1940′s followed by some 2-storey homes. My grandparents lived in one on Cowley.

The neighborhood had its quirks, including a lack of storm sewers and inconsistent rear yard grading, which led to frequent basement flooding. I recall sitting on my grandparent’s back porch watching lighting repeatedly strike the tall CBC mast on Lanark Avenue (now gone) across from my high school, Champlain (now also repurposed) whose principal was Russ Jackson. After watching the storm, we trooped down to the basement to see how much water came in, and to move the beer.

Over the fence to the rear was an extra deep lot with a rather slummy cottage on it, set about 100′ back from the road, occupied by an artist, possibly Victor Tolgesy  whose works include the lady flying in the cloud sculpture hanging in the ByWard Market building. Down the street was a cold-war era house built of solid concrete (or at least with a concrete bomb shelter) so that after the rest of the City was Bombed Out, their river-view house would still stand (don’t laugh, that is why Tunney’s Pasture and EMR Booth Street were built – outside of the bomb blast radius that would take out the downtown, there would still be surviving civil servants available to run the country).

What made the promised 90 minute tree-watching walk on Sunday more intriguing was the heavy political overtones. To its residents, this appears to be a neighborhood under siege.

Many of the giant burr oak trees are in the back yards, but many are also visible on front yards or at corner lots. The trees are very tall, multi-branched, with a distinct upward open shape rather than a round canopy.

Some of the trees are very old, about 175 years, and over a meter in diameter. Here is a tree slice that illustrates their size and leads into the next phase: cutting them down:

The dark smudge near the heartwood in the centre is staining from an iron nail put in the tree about 1840. While it may have been an important survey nail, I think it more likely it was the end of a clothesline. The underwear must be dried.

There is a nice assortment of other large native trees in the neighborhood: ash, catalpa, red oak, silver and sugar maples, rowanberry (mountain ash).

So where did the tree slice pictured come from? Infill. A number of the smaller houses have been replaced in the 70′s through 90′s with suburban-style homes that still don’t blend in well. But they were generally single homes. Today, developers are replacing old stock houses with very large singles, duplexes, or clusters of 3 to five homes. In addition, homeowners are turning smaller old homes into McMansions. These larger homes, or new homes, take up more of the lot, and the trees gotta go.

The political education bit started with identifying the favorite villain, the evil, greedy developer who builds new houses that “don’t blend in” in pursuit of that dreadful profit. In Champlain Park, profit is still a four-letter word.

But over the course of the walk, the political message got more nuanced. The City was fingered as a villain, for wanting to plant Kentucky coffee trees and crab apples and other small-size trees instead of large growing natives. And for being very willing and quick to identify large trees as “having a fungus” or some other reason for cutting them down now. Yup, the City was getting tagged with the “enemy” list, which I personally found very gratifying since I thought I was alone in thinking the worst enemy of the urban forest is the City Employee.

The road department employees also came in for criticism, for excessively wide roads although no one could quite bear to suggest maybe the streets themselves were too wide in the neighborhood. And don’t forget Hydro, which loves to trim trees around overhead wires.

Elderly people were also identified as culprits. In the fall, there apparently is a spate of calls to the City to cut down trees that drop “too many leaves” on the poor elderly homeowner. They should be sentenced to condo-beria.

There was a bit of political self-congratulation too, identifying homeowners that positioned their new homes or whopping rear-facing additions to avoid established trees. The survival of some specimens I saw seemed more due to good luck than anything else (like the foundation that came within 3′ of giant oak, on all three sides…).  Yes, the era of the modest size home is long gone in this neighborhood.

As is the modest-priced house, since infills tend to be large to maintain the ratio of lot price to house price. And it won’t be helped by  insisting on fewer larger houses on the lots (very very expensive) rather than more, smaller houses (duplexes, also very expensive, but only with one very). And the neighbours didn’t take kindly to the condos elsewhere in the neighborhood either, as I saw several lawn signs denigrating condo developers. Where are those old folks going to downsize, or  young couples going to live — Kemptville? Cornwall?

No blame was apportioned to the vendors of the lots who happily enjoyed the large trees, then sold to developers, with perhaps a tich of foreknowledge about what might be coming. Or the homeowner who sold his side lot, knowing the five massive oaks would be cut down, but preferred that the trees go rather than forego his 4′ strip of grassy sideyard. There is no shortage of villains in the area.

But there were heros too. Some residents are collecting acorns, and sprouting them. Residents talk of inoculating ash trees ($300 a pop, must be done several times…) at their own expense.  The Community Association is getting more proactive with developers to try to fit in development and prevent tumorous additions from killing trees.

It is hard to argue aesthetics and environmental values with developers and city bureaucrats who work with dollars. A number of trees in the area were tagged with with price-tags, complete with scan code, showing the economic value of a large tree:

I did not see any signs of guerilla gardening, where residents plant their oak whips on parkland or roadsides, but I am confident that will be happening by next year.

In the meantime, the last laugh may come from the trees themselves. Such very tall trees do periodically shed a large branch, from great height, squishing the car or house below. Or, as shown below, just muscling those pesky humans aside:

Get Lost

This post was originally written for Spacing Ottawa, www.spacingottawa.ca, and is reprinted here in case you are so negligent you do not subscribe to that site. You should have read it there! Spacing deals with geography across Canada; Spacing Ottawa deals with geography in Ottawa. WSA, of course, is a smaller focus on the neighborhoods on the  west side of the downtown. But it’s all geography!

There is some new content at the bottom of the post.

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As an urban society, we have to shift our focus away from exclusively serving motor vehicles as the norm, and towards serving people, regardless of the mode they use.

Say you want to give someone directions  to visit you. Giving driving instructions is quite straight forward. Take Albert Street to Bronson then turn right… etc etc.  Roads have names because people can remember them, sort them, and keep things somewhat straight.

Now try giving  instructions to your house using pedestrian and cycling paths: “Well, just past the bridge over the railway tracks, take the unpaved path on the right, the one under the hydro pylons, and follow it till you get to the fifth path that runs off to the left and follow it to get to my street. And don’t take the fourth or sixth turn-off, or you will never get here.”

After all, we would never think of building streets without naming them, but we build paths without names. This lack of names denies them legitimacy. We name everything in our language; pundits and academics delight in putting a new name on some new trend or discovery. So why aren’t people demanding names for our paths? Especially with 9-1-1 service being geographically address based, knowing a location is a matter of vital urban safety as well as a convenience.

A few years ago I started lobbying for a proper off-road bike and pedestrian path along the north side of Albert and Scott Streets, from Bronson to Churchill. I got tired of waving my hands in the air every time I tried to describe where it is, and coined the name BikeWest. Politicians and planners adopted the word  immediately. By branding the path, and the concept of improving it, BikeWest got a life. It got respect. It became real. Now you won’t find the name on a City map yet, but lots of planners and people know where it is.

And names are important. I am not a fan of numbering pedestrian and cycling paths or routes. If a route follows Bank Street, we don’t need it to have a second identifier as “bike route 17”. For routes that follow a maze of different streets, or run separate from streets, we do need a unique name that creates a unified route.

Quite simply, every bike path and walking path should have a distinct name. Preferably a name that identifies where it is or gives a clue about where it goes. These could be directional (BikeWest) or by neighborhood (Little Italy, Westboro).

We would never think of building streets without street signs, but we don’t hesitate to build pedestrian and cycling paths without signs. We don’t have signs because most paths lack names. And that which is unworthy of a name is unworthy of respect, of being used in daily discourse, or being useful.

But without names, there is no easy way to identify a path. It is even worse if you are on it, and come to a street corner or intersection. Where it meets a cross street, the City will put up street signs for even the shortest little dead-end road. Motorists need to know where they are.  But if you arrive via footpath or cycle path, apparently the City either believes that you don’t deserve to know where you are, or that you will somehow divine your location by geo-osmosis.

Every time a path meets another, it should be sign posted. And every time a side path runs off to a local street, sign it! It is accepted that providing such signing, for motorists, is simply a normal cost of running a city. But why only for motorists?

Fortunately, we have the NCC giving us a taste of what should be done. A number of the NCC’s main pathways do have names, with occasional signs identifying them, but the path names are not yet widely recognized.

The NCC signs sometimes show streets, or attractions, or path names, or two of the three — just as we have come to expect in signage for drivers. These signs reassure users they are on the correct route, how far it is to their destination, etc. Still, not all NCC pathways have these signs, and the ones that do are not consistent in what they show.

Even better would be numbered posts every tenth of a kilometer on greenway trails (they can do it on highways…) or putting up house-style numbers on each lamp post along the urban routes. If there is an accident, if someone is lost, if someone wonders how far they have to go, a glance at the nearest post would put them on the 9-1-1 map.

As a society we have a century of figuring out how to name and sign streets and install wayfinding signage for motorists. It is time to assign names to paths, then hand the job over to the City sign department who should develop appropriate signage standards and vocabulary.

As an urban society, we have to shift our focus away from exclusively serving motor vehicles as the norm, and towards serving people, regardless of the mode they use.

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Here is an example of street numbering at work in a park. The old trolley station at Britannia is a popular picnic spot. It has been given a street number even though it is not on a street, so a sign post has been installed at the street itself. Addresses are important in our geographical identity systems.

Indistinguishable crosswalk lures peds to danger

The picture is taken from the McKenzie-King Bridge, between the canal and Rideau Centre. The unique spiral staircase on the left is now closed, and will be removed. It is, apparently, not fully accessible.

It is being sort-of replaced by the straight staircase on the right, adjacent the new Convention Centre. It has an elevator hidden inside a nifty turned-over ice-cream cone metal shroud, so Everyone can go up or down.

But look closely at Colonel By Drive. Notice that peds arriving at the bottom of the staircase on the right appear to have a crosswalk. And on the left side, partially obscured by the old stairs, there is a connecting sidewalk. I watched as several sets of pedestrians approached the road and sort-of started right into crossing while simultaneously checking that cars were actually stopping. Only they weren’t. Stopping that is. The motorists were zooming along Colonel By like it was the Qway (outside of rush hours).

After a few minutes examining the scene, I realized the horizontal stripes across the road are not crosswalks, they are some sort of architectural landscaping treatment, or maybe warning lines to encourage traffic to slow down. They just look like a crosswalk, especially when connecting the canal-side paths with the staircase up to McKenzie-King.

A solution to this problem would be to pave the first “crosswalk” entirely in pavers, and mark it properly as a crosswalk.

Ottawa needs a T-pass

In the old model, the City (ie, taxpayer at the Fed, Prov, or municipal level) provided roads at no charge to motorists. The Fed and Prov level recovered some of the money through taxes on gasoline in excess of the general sales tax rate.

For non-motorists, there are sidewalks, and Ottawa is very good at having sidewalks  along most major roads, including some rather isolated ones where pedestrians are rare.

For transit users, the cost is shared between the user, who pays a per ride or monthly fee, and the taxpayer.

A number of municipalities have experimented with no-fare transit, and find that ridership soars. In theory, the additional cost of the service is offset by providing fewer/narrower roads.

As soon as any user fee or fare is charged, the balance of choice between car and transit alters. Many households have a car anyway, and if the parking is convenient and free … most users simply fail to recognize the cost of having the car (got a garage? you’re paying $20-40 a month more in municipal taxes for that!).

The U-pass is an attempt to shift the balance for cost-conscious students, and by all accounts I have heard it has been pretty successful. The universities do not, of course, immediately save on parking space provision, but over time they definitely provide fewer as demand is less.

Some businesses charge for parking. MEC even charges its customers for parking, and the place is full and expanding. The Rideau Centre garages aren’t exactly empty either. Until the day when parking is a taxable benefit, or must be charged for, special efforts to help transit will be required. These are insignificant when compared to the cost of providing and maintaining a surface parking space, which is in excess of $1000 a year.

When will our semi-public big corporations move beyond greenwashing to actually doing something to help the modal split? The School Boards could lead by example, by offering staff that want it a subsidized bus pass, call it the T-Pass.

Students would actually see role models rather than the current spectre of teaching without practicing.

ODSB: recognize reality; deal with it

There was an earlier post* on the botched attempt by the Ottawa public school board to convert playground space into parking spaces at Devonshire School. Their asphalt blitzkrieg plans were discovered in time to retard the pave-over.

There is a meeting this evening at the school at 6pm to discuss new plans. The Board has come up with this plan:

The key features shown above include an expanded teacher parking lot achieved by paving over some of the play yard, on the lower right. The spaces are accessed from the public laneway behind the school. [are these spaces legal and conforming to parking standards and by-laws? -- ed].

To compensate for the loss of play yard, they propose moving the east side fence (at the top right of the picture, along Breezehill Ave) closer to the street. This recovers the lost playyard space, but still results in a net reduction of green space around the school.

They also inserted a single off-street parking space at the Breezehill frontage, shown on the picture just below the “1″ of the subtitle “option 1″.

I think the proposed plan is great. Any grade sixer could have drawn it.

The plan isolates the front lawn, leaving a generous wide grassy lawn with big trees in front of the school. This lawn should be in good shape since the kids are kept locked up behind fences on asphalt “playgrounds” so they can’t get on it. The Board has to get over its fixation on paved parking lots, and broad lawns that serve no practical purpose. This ain’t Barrhaven, it’s central urban area, and needs to be treated as such.

First rule: don’t waste space. Utilize what we’ve got. I suggest the front sidewalk to the building be turned into a formal courtyard space, with two entry pillars at the sidewalk, perhaps with lamps on top to emphasize the light of learning. Then enter a courtyard, with nice paving, benches, planters, where people can feel welcome and safely gather as they come to and from school.

The low courtyard walls (perhaps with decorative fence on top) would have gates into each of the play yards. Kids and parents would feel welcome to the play yards, and have a decompression space as they leave the play structures. The nicely landscaped courtyard would more than make up for the reduced  “broad grassy lawn” at the front of the school. The play yards in this scenario would now be growning larger than they are presently.

Here’s a sketch, by another grade six graduate:

The above plan is just to whet the appetite. A lot could be done for the yard, if the Board was willing. A first step is to get rid of the proposed car parking space on the front lawn. I doubt if it is legal; and reflects that mindset that puts the convenience of (one) motorists above all else. Perhaps it should be called the Ottawa District Parking and Also School Board?

So by all means move the yard fence closer to Breezehill, but that is merely the first step, a downpayment on fixing what is currently ugly but could be a trophy heritage school. And make sure that parking space, which blocks so many creative uses of the space, is expelled from school. The other parking spaces, that caused all this commotion, off the laneway, should be unpaved for now, so that later the Board can demonstrate to its little charges and parents,  its committment to the environment by using permeable paving or other environmentally-friendly surfaces.

Then let the parents spend the summer keeping an eye out for  schools that have utilized all their surrounding spaces. There are many right here in Ottawa that have functional, attractive yards instead of lawns. Collect the crowdsourced ideas, run an evening workshop with a landscape architect, and then build the plan.

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*Post in May outlining the problem, with side pic:  http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/ottawa-district-parking-board/