Category Archives: Bronson

Rescue Bronson (part v): gas station flip flop

Several years ago, Suncor rebuilt the Petro-Can station at the corner of Gladstone and Bronson. It is on a fairly big site for a city. It has the conventional layout: gas pumps under a canopy out front where it can be seen, a convenience store and pay point in the rear. The whole station architecture is part and parcel of a “branding” exercise so we all know whose station it is without any signage actually being required.

Now, let’s look at the Petro-Can at Somerset:

When trying to rescue Bronson from the City’s original excessively auto-obsessed design, community members asked that the Petro-Can at Somerset and Bronson have its driveways reduced from four to two. After all, the modernized one at Gladstone has one entrance on Gladstone, one on Bronson. Why did Somerset need two entrances on each street, two curb cuts on each face, four sidewalk crossings, and dangerous exits and entrances to the street just fifteen feet from a already hazardous intersection, one of the ten most dangerous (for pedestrians) in the city?

The City came back telling us that it couldn’t be done. Now I doubt if they even tried to reduce it from four entrances to two.

Because Suncor came to the community last week with plans to reconstruct the Somerset Petro-Can station. And lo and behold, there is now one entrance on each street, not two. “Don’t like four”, came the explanation, “too dangerous. Much better with two.” Apparently, Suncor isn’t that unwilling to have two entrances rather than four after all.

Much more exciting was the revised site plan. Gas stations follow a time-honoured design from the nineteen forties, with pumps out front. Like strip malls and other front-yard parking commercial layouts, this blights the pedestrian environment and degrades the urban experience. It’s part of that “motorist-centric” planning model we are trying to move beyond. Back to the future, so as to speak, as we go back to the traditional mainstreet design of buildings close to the sidewalk.

The old station design has the kiosk under the centre island, with the back of the lot storage shed.

The newish Petro-Can at Gladstone has a more modern, much higher canopy, but still has the pumps out front, the kiosk pushed to back of the auto-dominated front of the lot. The kiosk and canopies are “standardized” components, modules put together pretty much the same way everywhere there is a station.

There is the usual pylon advertisement out on the curb, in case you haven’t noticed the station before, or missed the signage put high up on the canopy.

At the City’s suggestion — or maybe insistence? — the new station at Somerset will be reversed.

The convenience store will be right out front, set at the very corner of the intersection. It will have pedestrian doors facing the Bronson sidewalk (but not the Somerset one). And doors facing the pump islands. There will be sign pilons built up and out from the building, rather than freestanding.

This new design, and I congratulate whomever is responsible for it at Petro-Can or city planning, removes the “big hole” appearance at a major intersection, and puts some building fabric back onto the streetscape. It should also serve to calm traffic. And the single entrance on each street will definitely improve pedestrian and motorist safety. There will be room for more curbside landscaping, hopefully including trees (although that might be going too far, since visibility to speeding motorists is so important).

Petro-Can will use the same bricks for its pedestrian pavers as those being used in the new Chinatown streetscaping (hopefully they get this right and use the Chinatown pavers and not the Bronson pavers, since we are trying to prioritize Somerset which is rudely interrupted by Bronson). They were not willing to add some Chinoiserie to the design.

I don’t have a picture of the new station layout, but the only other station I know of in the city with a version of this design (let me know if you have seen others) is at Iris and Greenbank, near Ikea, but is has no pedestrian doors to the sidewalk:

(photo above from Google Streetview).

Rescue Bronson (part iv): how to plant trees in gravel

It’s somewhat scary to look at the pictures of the Bronson reconstruction zone. One naturally wonders how trees could possibly survive in such little squares of space in a sea of asphalt and concrete.

The tree roots are underground, and it’s what’s underground that counts most for their survival (although the concrete curb around the planting hole also helps a lot but preventing the soil from being compacted, and deterring cars and other forms of abuse). Here is one method of planting trees in the hard-compacted gravel road base:

Plastic frames, very similar to those ubiquitous plastic milk cartons found on bike carriers and in student apartments everywhere. A large tree root zone is dug out and its gravel base compacted til it’s flat. It looks rather like the bottom of wading pool. Then the cells are placed down on it….

The cells are interconnected with spaces, although that is not readily visible in the photo above. A plastic frame or edge is put around the structure to hold the good dirt in, and the gravel roadbed out.

Some tubes are laid into the planting bed to encourage air exchange and oxygenation of the soil. I notice that the tubes used on Bronson are way smaller than those used in previous years and on other projects. A gap is left where the tree is to be inserted, marked in the picture above by the worker on the left.

The cells are filled with topsoil. The plastic frames keep the soil from being compacted. The gaps in the frames permit roots to roam in search of more good soil and moisture. Note that in the picture above the cells run right up close to the curb, so we can assume the concrete sidewalk will be poured on top, but the tree roots will be happy with space to roam under the walkway.

When filled with dirt, the perimeter is packed with gravel to hold everything together. A top sheet is laid over the cells, and then paved over with concrete sidewalk or asphalt driveway. The cells are strong enough to support vehicles, while keeping the topsoil underneath uncompacted.

An alternative method of planting in hard urban environments is “structural earth / soil”, covered in several posts a few years ago: http://www.westsideaction.com/structural-earth/

Rescue Bronson (part ii): why concrete is good landscaping

Once the underground utilities are in, visible structures start to appear on the surface. The City necessarily puts a high value on the unseen stuff; as members of the public we relate more to what’s visible. And members of Rescue Bronson wanted a quality surface landscaping.

If the City merely restores what used to be there, we end up, after two years of construction mess, with an expensive landscape that facilitates front yard parking, dinky walkways to what were originally-built as celebrating building doorways, foot traffic that wears out the front foot (or more) or soft landscaping, etc.

A major step forward in urban landscaping, in my opinion, is the addition of a second concrete curb, this time behind the pedestrian walk. This keeps snowplows off the landscaping, discourages foot traffic on the growing media, and usually thwarts front yard parking. It gives trees and shrubs and even grass as fighting chance in a heavy mechanical environment.

Above: the old front yard has been dug up for new sewer and water connections. The space leftover after the road and other stuff is put in is pretty small. It needs all the help it can get to support landscaping.

Above: the curb protects the front edge. It is a battle to get the city to extend the curb back to the house foundation, but it is a worthwhile feature. It deters front yard parking. It defines the planting zone. The generous wide new front steps are proportionate to the size of the porch.

Above: curbed plant zone is separate from the driveway and front walkway. It will still be a struggle for trees and plants to survive if planted in road-building gravel which is designed to compact into an unshifting mass, but there are likely some hidden underground features which will be the subject of a subsequent story. The eight or so inches of topsoil will be enough to support most front yard plantings of shrubs or grass.

above: a number of buildings along Bronson had front yards paved in bricks or asphalt for not-necessarily-legal parking on the front lawn / city boulevard space. If the city restored the brick, car parking would resume, and the streetscape continues to be degraded. We asked for the planter shown above to extend right back to the front wall of the building, and all buildings along the street. The City originally demurred, saying they would require legal permission from every owner before they designed that. We encouraged them to go the “cablevision route”, ie design the curb all the way back, and see who objects, as it is hard for property owners to envision what the whole street could look like when pre-construction it is such an abused space. Obviously, this owner wanted the “low maintenance” bricks restored. But it looks like there will be three trees in these two planters, and the brick space may be too narrow to fit in a car.

Above: notice how the planter runs the full width of the building, so it is in scale. When there will be trees and shrubs, this building will look better, attract tenants easier, and offer a green buffer from the traffic, particularly for the first a second floor apartments which will look into leafy trees. A similar building isn’t as well done:

Above: this apartment building a bit further down the street has a much more minimal planter. What exactly is the amenity value of the gap between the planter and the front walkway? And worse yet, what is the gap to the left of the planter? It’s too small to park a car… I think this building is falling short of the benefits it could have had.

Above: Rescue Bronson specifically identified the Guytel building has having an excessively wide curb dip. Why does a small business with six or eight parking spaces need a 35′ wide driveway?The planter on each side is way shorter than the parking space beyond it.

Above: the muffler shop beside Guytel. Another too-wide entrance. That planter could have been at least the depth of the parking space, as the asphalt area is now just left-over paved space.

The curbed planters line up from house to house, adding some regularity to the streetscape, helping to define the walkway. A row of bricks against the roadside curb will help define the junk zone where the city drops in hundreds of sign posts, locates the street lighting, and hopefully contains the dead tree trunks supporting overhead wiring.

Rescue Bronson makes lemonade (part i)

Long-time readers will recall the bru-ha-ha about Bronson reconstruction. The City rather high handedly announced it was rebuilding Bronson through the west side of the downtown, was going to widen it by 2′, and do precious damn little for pedestrians, cyclists, and residents.

The Rescue Bronson led a valiant two year battle against the current dysfunctional and dangerous road design that blights the community. Efforts to put Bronson on a road diet failed. The City opted for a faithful remake of the 1950′s roads-are-sacred movie (best seen at a drive-in, of course).

Within the Rescue Bronson group and community at large, there were some who maintained the struggle for a long time, fighting a rear-guard action against the steam-rolling city. That’s a useful strategy, as sometimes the City changes course. At various times, other members realized that the big battle was lost, but if the City is going to spend a bazillion bucks re-creating the 50′s, then at least grab some of that money to make the project better. I’m generally a member of the opportunistic school.

When life hands you lemons … make lemonade. Never accept a municipal defeat (of a rezoning, road or other project…). Regroup, and seize the opportunity to get some local improvements. Get ‘em while they’re feeling guilty.

When the City reconstructs roads they tear up a lot of front yards. Their policy is to “restore” the property to its prior condition. But if that road and City has been blighting the neighbourhood for decades, then the landscaping and conditions might well be … well, Minimal. Neglected. Dysfunctional Choose your adjective, they come to mind easily when walking Ottawa’s roadside disaster zones.

The City tried to greenwash the project, drawing huge green circles around paved intersections and declaring them “greenscape zones” and similar such rot. * In reality, they were putting a few trees and shrubs on the side streets where they met Bronson because there was “no room” left along the city-owned Bronson boulevard.

(above: houses are not too close to the street. They used to have lovely front yards. Trees. The city blighted space, leaving only what it couldn’t pave for cars. The road is too close to the houses. How can we make it better?)

We let the City know in no uncertain terms that a few token trees on sidestreets, and ”restoring” ugliness wasn’t acceptable. New front sidewalks should be as wide as the stairs up to front porches. Front lawns and gardens needed protection from snowplows, garbage, errant feet. Any space bigger than 12″ x 12″ had to be planted. We had to end front yard parking. While the City generally won’t “improve” private properties as part of road reconstruction they can be pushed into implementing a common streetscape design that blends into private properties. In my view, that blending occurs over 100% of the frontage, right up to the foundation.

After all, if they can bring the road bed and sewers up to the latest standards, suitable for the next century, why can’t they fix the side boulevards too?

The Rescue Bronson membership included experienced hands from the Preston and Somerset traditional mainstreet rebuilds, so we knew the features that make for a liveable street. We started a list, and reiterated it over and over. We demanded more meetings, more face time with the planners, til they were sick of us. We wanted protected, in-ground planters. Trees. Planters that sit on the surface, if utilities underneath prevented digging.

We ridiculed the City’s suggested planting and landscaping as pathetic, underachieving, uninspired. We demanded a walkabout with the landscape architect, planner, consulting engineers, and city’s supervising engineer. The Councillor came, and gave a voluble public dressing-down to staff along the lines of it not being a game to see who can do the least, that they weren’t listening, that we expected a lot better. More senior staff starting showing up, attracted by the stink.

Rescue Bronson members had written to the project team saying what features we wanted all along the street, but then we kicked it up a notch. We took a picture of every front yard, every house, and every business frontage along the reconstruction zone. We prepared a report. Each page had picture of a house or cluster of properties, and the text underneath specified exactly how our general wish list could be applied to each location. This was necessarily repetitious, for property after property, but we felt it necessary to spell it out, so the city wouldn’t cheap out. No excuses.

Tomorrow: we start checking out the rebuilding process on Bronson.

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*greenwashing takes many forms. Notice that the remaining route options for the Western LRT have been assigned colours. Guess which one is the “green route”?

Making the wrong arguments to planning committee doesn’t help

Yesterday, Planning Committee had an over-full agenda of contentious items. This meant huge waits for the assembled throngs. All seats were taken, and there were over 70 standees / folding chairs / sitting on the floor. For a 8+ hour meeting.

The final votes were to approve various high rise developments, leading to the predictable reaction of citizen attendees that the process was unfair, rigged, or otherwise unsatisfactory.

I agree the process is unsatisfactory and might dedicate a subsequent post to suggestions to fix it. And incidentally save us all buckets of money. But a large part of the dissatisfaction yesterday comes from residents making the wrong arguments to planning committee. Most of these mistaken arguments were in evidence at the 265 Carling (at Bronson) rezoning application from 9 to 18 stories.

One of the biggest errors is making an argument that isn’t highly specific to the project in question.

Asking council to reject a high rise “because it will increase crime in the neighbourhood” doesn’t accomplish much. The claimant presented no facts to back up that opinion. If tall buildings promote crime, how come it isn’t a major problem now, given numerous apartment buildings nearby? Are buildings nine floors and under crime free while the crime wave begins on the tenth? Fact is, some high rises are crime prone. So are some town house clusters. And so are some low rise neighbourhoods. Does that mean we should ban single family homes and townhouses?

Obviously people in higher rise buildings care about their neighbourhood and crime. They were out in force at the meeting.

If high rises promote criminality, then this would be an argument for no high rises anywhere. Any and all objectors to rezoning would cite this crime-gateway-thru-highrise-living argument and no high rises would be built anywhere… which throws out a major local industry…and huge chunk of the Official Plan… to say nothing of reversing the rules in the Provincial policy statement and thus thwarting high rises in every lot, in every municipality in Ontario.

Sorry, the crime argument won’t convince planning committee to vote down the rezoning, because it was too generic (as well as probably being wrong).

It will generate [too much] traffic. Well duh, of course it will. But the proposed condo is adjacent an arterial. And yes that arterial is busy now. It will get busier in the future too. But don’t mistake the origin point of a trip with the the problem. After all, building that same high rise six blocks or sixteen blocks or sixty blocks further away will generate the same amount of traffic on that arterial. After all, those cars are going somewhere (on average, over 8 kilometres per commuter trip). On arterials.

The main influence of the origin point is that the closer it is to the central area of the city, the less vehicular traffic it will generate. Moving the 265 Carling high rise out to Bayshore or Barrhaven will generate more traffic than at Carling and Bronson because the further out you go the more every trip has to be made by car since those places have constrained walkability. Objecting to a building in the Glebe Annex because of traffic is to invite worse traffic congestion (thru more tripmaking) when the people are housed further out.

And again, if this project is bad here, then every project is bad everywhere. There simply aren’t arterial roads sitting around with tons of spare capacity nor can we force people to only drive on those spare-space roads. They’ll end up on Carling or Bronson eventually.

Sorry, the busy arterial argument is unlikely to sway council.

Building a high rise near the intersection of Carling and Bronson will make it more dangerous for high school kids to go to school or cross the street. Really? So we shouldn’t build any new buildings near any high schools? Presumably that argument applies to grade schools too. And community centres. And routes to school too. Or parks. Or routes to parks, of which our neighbourhood always had the least amount of park space of any area in the city.

Sorry, another fail.

But more people living near Glebe HS or other established schools might reduce driving and school busing. How many student parking spaces are there at Glebe?[even one?] At Woodroofe? [a bunch] At St Mark’s in Manotick?[lots and lots]. There’s a reason people like living in the built up city (walkability) and others prefer suburbs or exurbs (driveability).

The Glebe Annex neighbourhood, claimed one speaker, is family friendly, with little kids. High rises won’t have any kids. I sympathize with this emotion, I too favour kid-friendly streets. But 70-80% of households are child-free … are we proposing to forbid them to live in the Glebe? Can we force empty nesters to sell their Glebe homes to make way for breeders? Can we force them to sell only to breeders? Even at a loss?

Again, that argument wasn’t site specific to 265 Carling; and applied pretty much equally to every apartment anywhere in the city. I vaguely hope someone somewhere is compiling data about how many more people are now having babies or raising kids in apartments, given that single family homes in the central city are out of the price range of most young families.

Sunlight and views are important for some people. They are very important for me. But I don’t have a legal right to never be in the shade. Heck, you know the tall building over at Tunney’s Pasture? I sometimes see the sun setting behind it … which means I am in its shadow … despite being two kilometers away. Sorry for the speaker at Tuesday’s Planning Committee, but the the city just ain’t gonna reject a building because it blocks your view to the west, or might reduce the brightness of light. It has standards, rules, that specify a certain distance between buildings to let in light, that’s all folks.

No one has a right to forever preserve their current view of the Gatineau Hills, or the Peace Tower, or the city scape off in the distance. Development happens. Telling council to reject this high rise because it blocks your view isn’t likely to happen, and only sets you up for rejection. Council isn’t being contemptuous when it disregards arguments it hasn’t any legal or moral right to enforce. There are only a very few protected view planes in the city, and until some politician is buried on the roof of the Fitzsimmons building, the Glebe isn’t one of them.

Planners currently are concerned with controlling, manipulating, creating .. skylines. They refer to the view of several high rises as a composition. They currently like a composition that comes together to form a peak. At a node, like a transit station or major intersection. So a cluster of apartments at Bronson and Carling that has some low rises, some mid rises, and the centre a single peak tallest building, appeals to them. Ergo, pointing out that the latest building, in the centre spot, is taller than the others is perceived by planners as a virtue, not a drawback. All the more reason to approve it. And here comes the locals pointing out the very feature that planners like while mistaking it for an argument to reject the proposal.

While each approved new building is not strictly speaking a precedent that allows subsequent applications for similarly tall buildings, we all know that the emphasis in Ottawa on compatibility means that proposals that blend in have better chances of survival. So builders cite nearby buildings to justify their project. And residents cite these same buildings to argue that the new building is out of context. Both are employing precedent, one to oppose and one to propose change.

It strikes me as ironic that today’s apartment dwellers on Carling object to a new high rise while themselves living in buildings that when proposed a generation ago were “out of context” and incompatible, according their then-neighbours. And those two storey houses built by the tract-builders of the day may have irritated those that preferred the Glebe when it was semi-rural. You know, those folks that in their turn displaced the original forest dwellers of the area.

So when I read that residents attending planning committee leave feeling that their concerns were ignored, that the process was a sham, that it was all cooked or pre-determined, or that councillors were showing contempt by checking their emails, whispering with staff, or other wise multi-tasking, I both agree that its a messy system, and feel that a big part of the problem is people bringing the wrong arguments. I would never have the patience to be a councillor listening to irrelevant arguments all day. In fact I couldn’t take being a spectator at the Tuesday’s session, and left before noon.

One cyclist down, 200 more to go

Friday’s Ottawa Citizen had a story about proposed changes to Bronson Avenue at the Canal, scene of a fatal cyclist-motorist collision last year. I didn’t see any mention of a program to address similar bits of bad road planning that proliferate in this City. Do we have to kill more cyclists to get more fixes?

The proposed changes to Bronson are welcome. They may even “solve” the problem on this stretch of Bronson. I use the word solve rather loosely. In fact, these measures address the most egregious problems in this one stretch of road.

All these measures are small steps forward, and we must be grateful for what progress we can get. Incrementalism does work, it just takes a long time. And during that long time, more cyclists and pedestrians will get clobbered at similar dangerous roads throughout the region.

Bronson is not an isolated bit of bad road that was unforeseen It is the result of years and years of deliberate road design. Those designs were to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible. To do it safely, road engineers borrowed those safety measures that science showed worked for highways: brighter lighting, wider straighter pavements, run-off or recovery zones at the sides where motorist errors could be forgiven and when these zones were not in use, could cheaply be employed to move cyclists and pedestrians.

Then remaining pedestrians are directed to stand at intersections at the very same spots where the engineers decided putting a fixed post is too dangerous, but hey, humans are soft.

We all know the results: traffic moves too fast, out of touch with its surroundings. The latest moves — some of which are not being suggested for Bronson — involve putting curves back into roads, closing them in on the sides with vegetation and height changes, closing in the “fourth surface” (the overhead space) and generally reducing the invitation to go faster. Bronson is getting some good fixes, like eliminating “merge” lanes and acceleration/deceleration lanes in favour of signalized intersections. The pickets along the bike lanes might make the road seem a bit narrower. Once the results are in, traffic surveys should be able to measure our success in slowing traffic and making the area safer.

Now, what about where the MacDonald Parkway (aka the Ottawa River Parkway, or the Ottawa River Commuter Expressway) where it debouches onto Carling? The design of Carling in this area invites cars to go faster. The Parkway entrances and exits are like freeway ramps. It would be dead easy to modify these to be a four way signalized intersection, but will it take another death before we look at this intersection?

Easy to fix these ramps – square off roads to make a (signalized) intersection

Or the many other intersections with the same design. Take a look at all the urban-area freeway on and off ramps along the Queensway, horrors like at Woodrooffe or Greenbank.

We don’t need to fix Bronson Avenue. We need a program to prioritize the worst urban “interchanges” and fix them, several per year, instead of one at a time as a cyclist or pedestrian is killed.

When Council passes the Bronson recommendations work order, I hope Councillor Chesnushenko is right there with a motion to direct engineering to come with a work program for the other bad intersections.

Maybe the temporary on Bronson should be permanent

The noisy work crews on Bronson have taken a winter break. They need one. It must be dispiriting for them to be reconstructing Bronson in the same dysfunctional 1950′s pattern of urban abuse. Our city is sometimes like a dysfunctional family, where the mistakes of the prior-generation parents are doomed to be repeated by the so-called adults of the present.

Here’s a view of the Bronson-Somerset intersection prior to the construction. Note the big yellow signal lights we so love to festoon above the traffic lanes, suspended on long metal arms in turn supported by freestanding metal posts, sometimes known as “street furniture”.

For the winter, crews have put up temporary signals strung on parallel wires.

Many other cities use this wire method of mounting all their signals at intersections. It requires only four poles, and the signals appear in the same location on all four sides of the intersection. I know wires running all over the place shouldn’t be attractive. But somehow, the wire suspension system — even in the temporary application on Bronson where the posts aren’t straight and minimal care was taken — looks somewhat neater than the collection of metal posts and arms, all of different lengths and angles, that Ottawa normally deploys at intersections.

It makes me wonder if the signals were put up permanently on wires rather than arms, would the intersection be neater than today? And maybe even more economical?

(note that Somerset east of Bronson is mostly free of overhead wiring, the result of being a shovel-ready project at a time of prior Federal stimulus spending. Thank you Mac Harb. Unfortunately the freed-up overhead space was not put to good use, for example trees with large canopies).

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Category Archives: Bronson

Rescue Bronson (part v): gas station flip flop

Rescue Bronson (part iv): how to plant trees in gravel

Rescue Bronson (part ii): why concrete is good landscaping

Rescue Bronson makes lemonade (part i)

(above: houses are not too close to the street. They used to have lovely front yards. Trees. The city blighted space, leaving only what it couldn’t pave for cars. The road is too close to the houses. How can we make it better?)

Making the wrong arguments to planning committee doesn’t help

One cyclist down, 200 more to go

Maybe the temporary on Bronson should be permanent

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(above: houses are not too close to the street. They used to have lovely front yards. Trees. The city blighted space, leaving only what it couldn’t pave for cars. The road is too close to the houses. How can we make it better?)

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