Category Archives: oc Transpo

Shake the planning etch-a-sketch: Build that LRT to Orleans, and charge them for it

Let’s shake the planning etch-a-sketch by building that LRT out to Orleans right now.

 And charging them for it.

The Sinkhole Incident on Hwy 174 has high lighted the lack of access to the former St Joseph d’Orleans.

And its not just the lack of road access, it’s the lack of alternatives.

If the sink hole happened on the road to Kanata, there are more alternative routes. The higher road capacity pushes off the breakeven point for extending LRT to Kanata. And remember, the nearest point of Kanata is further away than the farthest point in Orleans*.

In this road shortage situation, Orleans might be blessed. Because out of adversity comes advantage.

It is expensive to build more roads to Orleans, but I’ll bet all the politicians will be promising more roads. What they should do is provide more  transportation choices, such as extending the LRT out to Orleans.

After all, the purpose of transportation is move people, not automobiles. We have to get out of our minds the common assumption that people are normally in cars.

Why? Well, that road that begins in Orleans ends in Ottawa. Which means more traffic at our schools, universities, offices, and on the city streets.  Much better to move the people rather than their cars. I’ll welcome the Orleanais in Ottawa but not their tin boxes.

But won’t extending the LRT be too expensive?

Well, it certainly costs money, but what about the alternatives? Like the cost of widening all those roads and intersections, both out there and in the city. Oops, sorry, our media and public discourse doesn’t headline those costs, only the transit ones. And we don’t calculate the “cost recovery or  revenue” for roads (perhaps because it is so low), but only for transit.***

So part of the problem is how we perceive the cost.

The second part is the low density of Orleans, and the longish-haul out to there and back, with no revenue between Montreal Road and Jeanne D’Arc. So the conventional planning wisdom says its not cost effective to run the LRT out there. Our transit boffins say it will be 30 years or more before the LRT extends to Orleans, if ever.

So let’s shake our planning etch-a-sketch and start anew.

The LRT to Orleans has little competition, there being but one primary road out there, the 174, which conveniently is owned and operated by the same provider as the LRT (the city). So we don’t have to worry about someone (like the province) stepping in and providing a competing transportation facility.

To be blunt, the city can force encourage people into transit by not providing more roads. That’s pretty much how we forced encouraged everyone onto roads in the years past (by building roads and starving pedestrians of sidewalks, transit users of transit, etc). New modes take off by government coercion and subsidy, as well as their competitive advantage.

The distance from Blair Station (east end of the current OLRT project) to Place d’Orleans is about six miles. The average cost of constructing a double track LRT in North America is currently $35 million per mile ** and this alignment is along an existing freeway and pretty much entirely through open fields (golf course, greenbelt, freeway right of way in the Orleans built-up area). Surely even Ottawa could build this for a near-average cost.  So, $210 million.

We need a station at Montreal Road, then one at Jeanne d’Arc, and the terminus at Place d’Orleans. For stations, add 3 x $50 million, or $150 million.

Total expansion cost of the track: about $400 million. Divide by the 50,000 households in Orleans, giving a per household cost of $8000. Amortize over 30 years (which is at least how long it would otherwise be before an Orleans extension of the OLRT could be justified) and it’s $266 per year on each household’s tax bill (interest costs are at an historic low rate, so I have ignored them; I expect interest costs might extend the payback period by a year or two, but I’ll leave that up to the number boffins, who can also figure out how much would be paid by new residents of the area as it grows).

That’s just $22 a month, per household. If there are two commuters, that’s $11 each.

So why would the Orleanais want to pay a special levy on their taxes to get what other residents get for their regular taxes?

Well, they’d get LRT and an escape from the Queensway traffic 30 years before their due.  For those Orleanais who wouldn’t use the LRT, their $266 a year buys them space on the road for their car by getting their neighbours off it.  And their house values would go up by maybe $8000 since the lack of access to Orleans supposedly suppresses their resale values today. No need to buy a car for the kid to go to college or university. And no need for mom or dad to find parking spaces at their destinations. And less car traffic on Orleans roads. And in Ottawa.

Of course, I ignored the operating cost of the extension. Purchasing the LRT vehicles and operating them is not free. But I think these costs could fairly be attributed across the whole city, as everyone across the city benefits from the Orleanais using fewer cars on the road (less congestion), and the LRT vehicles carry way more people per operator than do buses, reducing those costs the city as a whole would otherwise have been paying for bus service for the next thirty years.  

I think one of our current planning problems is that we view transit as an expense, a cost centre. We don’t expect it to pay its way. Would that we did the same for roads, but we don’t, and that’s not going to change soon. So, to expand the LRT and keep Watson’s promise of low tax hikes, it would take a plebiscite from Orlean’s residents to see if they were willing to incur a local improvement tax.

Definitely worth hashing out some better numbers, and trying it out on a focus group of Orleanais. So, I think the first step is for an Orleans councillor to ask transportation committee to rough out a cost to extend from Blair to Orleans, along the Qway. (And eventually to raise bloody hell if it an Ottawa-built LRT along an open field, using an existing right of way, comes in costing more than the North American average).

And best of all, the Orleans LRT  might piss off the Kanatans who would remain parked on their eight lane Qway.

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*or so I have been told. I didn’t verify this.

**Wikipedia. Note that Ottawa’s initial phase includes a very expensive tunnel. And the western extension requires lots of grade separations and very nice landscaping. After that, who knows if Ottawa’s costs are typical? Fortunately, the Orleans extension is thru rather ordinary fields not yet naturalized by the NCC. It’s hard to imagine a simpler, easier to build route.

*** most residents in Ottawa who read the paper or listen to CFRA, even Sun readers, could probably identify $2 billion as the cost of the LRT. How many of them could identify the cost of new private-vehicle roads and bridges in the same planning/construction decade?

Toronto Now — Ottawa Later

Toronto has new subway trains, now. Ottawa will have its new LRT trains sometime in the future.

What Toronto has now has certain similarities with what Ottawa will have in 2017 or 2018.

Unlike earlier subway cars that were individual cars hooked together into trains, without any means for passengers to switch cars, the new train cars have open gangways. This is similar to how the articulated OC Transpo buses work.

It means passengers can get on any car but then as passengers shift around, the load evens out throughout the train. Passengers feel safer, less “trapped” in one car. It also increases load capacity by 10%.

The LRT train sets for Ottawa are very likely to be of this design. The Toronto “rocket” train sets consist of six cars fixed in each set; there are 70 new train sets, totalling 420 cars. They have sixty eights seats, and room for 200 standees. Some seats fold up. Here are some pictures of the new TTC train sets that have been gradually being introduced to service since last year.

interior view down the series of TTC cars

The interiors feature  classy wine-red accent colours and doors. The panels that shield seats from doorways and function as “dividers” between seating groups are now all transparent with no solid panels. Some of the older TTC train sets have been updated with a very similar colour scheme.

close up view of the floor joint and gangway wall between Bombardier TTC cars

red lines guide people to the exits

I also shot a very short hi-def video of the the view along the train as it turns. Go to  http://youtu.be/BpJmI_Irkg0

And, for the really brave readers, here’s a final shot of yours truly on the new TTC Rocket train:

the TTC allows all manner of scary citizens on their trains, OC Transpo may exercise greater care

etc

etc

Major changes coming to downtown streets

The current downtown Ottawa is rather blah. Some might even call it bleh. Over the decades, it has become a motor-vehicle-oriented environment, with the fast movement of vehicles the main only priority. We all know about the walls of buses. And the priority given to automobile commuters over pedestrians. Trees: rare as hen’s teeth. It has become a downtown one goes to because you have to. It is not a shopping, or even much of a recreation destination. All rather sad.

When the LRT is opened, there will be major changes. Most OC Transpo buses will be off the Albert and Slater bus lanes. What do we do with the freed-up space? Recall too that the current bus stops disgorge pedestrians at many locations; the LRT will deliver huge crowds, all at once, at limited locations.

So Council directed that the Downtown Moves study be conducted, to integrate urban design and transportation strategy, and to restore the balance among street users [in council's actual words]. Most people can understand that a vibrant downtown doesn’t  come from wider roads, faster traffic, or “getting everyone out” as quickly as possible ( I exclude from this understanding some select minority voices).

The Downtown Moves study isn’t about just tinkering with the core. It’s a major rewrite opportunity, to reallocate space, to refresh the downtown sidewalks and streets for the next 50 to 100 years. Thus far, the working teams have not been timid. So it is time to look at some of the suggested streetscapes.

Note: these are working documents only, in progress sketches, and may not be the final designs. They will evolve under pressure from various factions. So how well are we moving towards the grand statement:

“Our downtown is about to undergo a transformation that will define a new identity and be the foundation for its prosperity for coming generations. The investment in Light Rail Transit will open and sustain a new pursuit of civic and national pride in the urban quality of our capital City. Our downtown streets will be reoriented to favour and comfort pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, recognizing that all travellers end and start their trip on foot. With this healthy and active orientation, our streets themselves will begin to be praised as among our city’s most coveted public spaces that in turn spark investment and that are befitting of the highest quality of buildings and open spaces along them”.

Queen Street will be a key street to the future. Currently the only two-way street downtown, it is a fairly claustrophobic, narrow canyon. It is a minor street destined to become the main pedestrian experience. The north sidewalks are very narrow east of Bank Street. The exit stairways and elevators to the underground stations will come up in what is now the parking lane on the south side of Queen (pic below).  There will be loss of some on street parking and planners have to figure out how to disperse crowds of 5000 people per hour. The sunny side of the street is the north side.

The sketch below has been marked up in a workshop focus group. The north parking lane is gone, replaced by wider sidewalks and pedestrian amenities. The south side parking lane is now paved in the same material as the sidewalks, and may even be at the same level as the sidewalk, separated from it by removable bollards, so that the parking lane can be incorporated into extra-wide sidewalks for events like Canada Day. Cyclists mix with traffic; and in the distance you can see a typical stairway entry to the LRT just beyond the two parked cars. Street furniture (ie mail boxes, benches, light posts, signs) will be all aligned with the trees to maintain the clearest possible sidewalks.

 

Two blocks north is Wellington. In the working sketch below (and remember, no decisions have been made…) there is a two-way bike lane suggested on the north side of Wellington. This helps make a more complete network of bike-friendly streets in the downtown connecting the major tourist points (bixi-bike tourism) and the major paths that approach the downtown but seldom connect with each other (this bidirectional bike lane would connect the Confederation Boulevard bike circuit, to the Alexandra and Portage Bridge bike lanes, etc). The two way path alignment was selected to minimize conflict with turning vehicles (the north side has few turn opportunities, and will apparently have fewer in the future as the Parliament Hill security perimeter expands) and to preserve sight lines to the Hill. Eastbound buses (and the whole STO route problem/scenario remains unsolved as yet) will stop at the curb; but what about westbound STO buses and tour buses? Tour buses in particular want to deliver passengers as close as possible to the destination. Bus riders may be let off onto islands between the bike lanes and bus lanes, but total available road width is a constraint. Double left turn lanes may be a thing of the past. The suggested public space configuration in the sketch will help remove the sense that Wellington is a huge barrier separating the downtown and Parliament:

Albert and Slater will be changed drastically once the main bus routes are removed. It seems uncertain just how many fewer buses will be there.  Some objectives along these streets are to integrate the public sidewalk space with the building setbacks and available private spaces along the street. Intersections will get much wider crosswalks. The parking lane is on the right side of the street, paved to match the sidewalks. It would not be a rush hour traffic lane. There would be bulb-outs at the intersections and midblock locations for trees. The bike lane is on the left side of the street, placing the cyclist close to the vehicle driver’s field of view and not hidden on the “far side” of the vehicle. There may be opportunities to squeeze in delivery bays between the bike lane and traffic lane. But essentially, the bus lane space has been given over to non-vehicular uses. Remember, though, that bike lanes have a higher capacity than car lanes.

The only north-south street that has been sketched out thus far is Metcalfe, and only north of Sparks. No analysis has yet been done for O’Connor, Kent, Lyon, etc. And as far as I could tell, they hadn’t yet addressed what to do south of Sparks. Frequently suggested is returning the streets to two-way status, the traffic planning fad of one way streets being largely past its acceptable date. Such a major change is beyond the mandate of the Downtown Moves plan. When examining the N/S streets, several new factors come into play. First, most of the parking spaces north of Queen are closed much of the time for security reasons. They can be repurposed a bus loading zones or para-transpo zones. Tourists walk slower and in wider groups than office workers, so the sidewalks connecting Sparks to the Parliamentary precinct should be wider. Then we might as well continue the wider sidewalks down to at least Albert to help disperse the commuter hordes arriving from the LRT stations. These north-south streets are also major locations for street vendors, so might as well plan for them now.

What’s next?

The Downtown Moves teams will be refining the sketches/scenarios for public space downtown. They have to run them by the traffic people to assess what it does for vehicular movements, goods movement, safety, special access needs, security, taxis, etc. They have to run them by the various downtown private sector groups, such as hotel owners, office building managers and owners, etc. They do have numerous photo examples of similar changes done successfully in other cities.

Hopefully, with continued leadership from the politicians (ie, no wavering in face of NIMBY’s who might lose a parking space or who believe cars rule) there can be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the transportation and urban design possibilities.

The Downtown Moves team will read the comments you make to this post, so fire away. And tell your councillor if you like the direction the study is moving, but save him or her the nit picky details as the study is still early on. We need to encourage the process towards a better downtown and not bog it down.

Spagetti dinner on the No 2 Bus

 

It was a hot and sunny four o’clock as I left Loblaws in Westboro.

My two cloth bags didn’t seem to have much in the line of groceries – yogurt (on sale!), cheese blocks (on sale!), oranges (on sale!) and a few other things already forgotten —  but still set me back seventy two dollars and change. Heading out the door I heard, then saw, the bus just taking off. That’s fine, I thought, the next one will have fewer people on it. Number two’s come constantly.

Ahead of me, just short of the bus shelter, was a young woman who also missed the bus. Her plastic bags strewn on the pavement,  she bent over gathering spilled groceries into the flimsy carriers. I can hear the clink of bottles. Wince.

I got to the bus stop. I stood waiting in the warm sunshine.  She was inside the glass shelter. Grocery bags plopped down unceremoniously on the wet and dirty concrete floor. I mentally reviewed my inventory: nope, I hadn’t an extra cloth bag to “loan” her, just the two I had already filled. The woman, a girl really, looked like a typical student. Early twenties, zipped-up college fleece, even though the day is hot. One-person-sized grocery order.

Clink of the bottles again. Along with the pale green plastic bags Galen Weston supplied, I notice she had a four pack of green coolers. Not the good Woody Mexican Lime that the LCBO stopped carrying before Christmas, but the anemic Hard Lemonade ones. She also had a Loblaw’s wine store bag with two bottles. Grocery priorities. Typical student?

A moment later I heard a glugging sound, and noticed she was still sitting on the bench, but with bottle bottom to the sky, wine gurgling out of the bottle at a high rate straight down her throat. About a fifth of the bottle gone in one gulp, she screwed the cap back on and struggled to get it back into the bag. I studied the street. Then stared west, willing a bus to appear.

The No 2 arrived, and the small crowd of travellers got on. She struggled to gather up her bags, the sound of glass bottles dragging over the concrete. She stumbled into the bus, falling to her knees,  groceries spilling onto the floor. Bottle of tomato sauce. Bottle of something else. A PC block of cheddar.  A baguette – a store-brand one, not the expensive ACE ones – folded in half to fit into the bag. The driver giggled. The girl gathered up the goods and lurched into the sideways seat behind the driver.  Girl leans back, closes eyes. Sleeping?

Another stop, another woman gets on, with an oversize jogging stroller and a fragrant box of French fries in hand. There is a major struggle to get the stroller into the bus. The driver giggles. She asks the girl to move, who drags her bottles across the aisle to the first regular seat. Clink, clunk. She misses two of the handles, so the bags sit on the floor in the middle of aisle, contents spewed on the floor. One of the coolers slips out of the cardboard carrying case.  It rolls on the floor.

The woman with the stroller tries to engage the girl in conversation, in thanks for having vacated the seat near the door. She waves her child’s hand. She doesn’t seem to recognize that the girl is drunk. So young, so well dressed, so typical student.

Next stop. Another guy gets on the bus. He has obviously had a hard life. He is clean and yet scruffy. Greets another woman in seat in front of me. They haven’t seen each other in some time. They catch up on news.

She’s been clean for a while now. Out of rehab and got a job at _____. She’s broken up with her boyfriend, who is back in jail for two years. She avoids answering where she lives now, the police don’t know where she is so they don’t hassle her. She doesn’t seem to connect the lack of hassles with going clean. He is still living at Saint _____’s. I make a mental note of that, I didn’t know they had a sheltered residence.  Neighborhood trivia.  Their conversation continues: The police – haven’t caught me yet, he says matter-of-factly.

At Parkdale, the woman with the big stroller decides to get off. Her’s was a pretty short ride. With that big wheeled stroller, why didn’t she just walk it? She struggles to get off, dragging the stroller backwards out the front door while holding her still-steaming fries and trying to pass three Asians who just got on and are trying to make themselves skinnier so she can get by. Eventually they get off, she gets off, they back on.  The driver giggles.

The girl in the meantime has awoken. She starts up, gathering up her bags from centre aisle and lurching for the back door. Bottles drag and clank. I await the pungent smell of red wine. Surely a bottle must break. She sounds like 5am on a blue box Monday morning.  Another passenger presses the yellow strip to activate the doors. She stumbles out, the bottles dropping onto the concrete sidewalk as they are being dragged rather than carried. None break.   She  lurches into the shelter and sits down, eyes shut. The corners of her mouth turn down so severely they must be weighted by bricks on strings. The unhappiness is so expressive, so exaggerated, it is unbelievable except that she lies there in the sun tidy and well dressed with her college-branded fleece zipped up tight on a hot spring day.

Baguette, tomato sauce, brick of cheese, red wine. Was there perhaps a packet of spaghetti in there too? Will there be wine left to go with that comfort food, or will she wake up hours later with the spaghetti gone cold and soggy? Does she even connect wine with food, or does it have another purpose?

The bus moves on. I scan the streets for a police car, a para-medic. What will I do if I see one? After Bayswater  there is a long gap before the next stop at Preston. The bus speeds up. Making up for lost time. I get out there. Thank you for the ride, I say to the driver. He giggles. I stand up right, my cloth bags firmly in my hands. Before the light can change for me to cross, another No 2 pulls up. Much emptier. The driver looks bored.

By time I get home, my resolution to do something has fled. She becomes, like the other passengers, an anecdote about My Trip to Loblaws. I sit on the back porch and we laugh about the matter of fact description of the boyfriend in jail and the police haven’t got me yet.

The girl with the makings of the spaghetti dinner and bottles of wine wakes me up around 1am and keeps me awake for an hour. Then I forget about her, until she wakes me up at 5am this morning.

Will telling the story get her out of my life?

Planning the O-Train bike path

Okay, so it’s not really a “bike path”, the City doesn’t have any of those. We have MUPs, or Multi User Paths, which are shared by cyclists, dog walkers, parents with wailers, grannies with yappers, kids alone,  etc. (It makes an interesting contrast: on roads, cyclists are told to play nicely with cars, buses, and tractor-trailers going 70km; off road, cyclists are sent to play with various pedestrian folks).

I’m on the PAC (public advisory committee) for the O-Train path that will eventually run from the Ottawa River pathways south to Dow’s Lake. The City will construct the section from Bayview Station to Somerset (or maybe Gladstone) in 2012. (This doesn’t mean you will ride on it in 2012, unless you winter cycle next December 15).  

looking north from Somerset viaduct, towards Bayview and the Ottawa River

 The path will follow roughly the dirt trail on the right side of the fence (in the pic above), unless we can convince (ie, pay for ) OC Transpo to relocate the fence a bit further left (west) since they don’t need the large right of way they fenced. Nor, BTW, does the fence follow the property line, which is six inches out from the concrete pillars holding up the elevated service road along the back of the City Centre Building bays.

The path will go under Somerset using the newly constructed underpass, subject of many previous posts, and then swing back upslope to join Somerset on the south side roughly where the billboard is located. A flight of stairs may also be installed, to forestall the inevitable goat path that would appear as peds shortcut the longer bike/wheelchair/perambulator pathway.

the as-yet unlit underpass with its virgin walls

 I wanted to make a checklist of points for the PAC meeting, so I don’t forget anything, and thought I would share them with you, gentle reader. The “experts” at these meetings are generally very nice, but can be overly bureaucratic (corrupted by the motorist-mindset at City Hall) and it never hurts to remember what the user thinks is important.

 1. the sloped path on the south side of Somerset needs to have all overland drainage run away from the path. If there is an upslope area, an intercepting swale is necessary to prevent early morning and early evening “freezing” patches in spring and early winter.

2. the flat path going overland should be elevated at least 12″ above the surrounding soils, to promote drainage, reduce flooding when the soil is frozen and it rains, and so users feel higher than the surrounding areas to have good visibility and enhance subjective safety. Of  course there should be a gentle gravel slope leading off  the edge of the asphalt to prevent erosion, cracking, and cyclist spills

2b. since the path is shared by various users, including commuter cyclists who are likely to be emulating Lance Armstrong velocity, it needs to be w-i-d-e.

3. there should be rest areas along the path (mainly for pedestrians, but useful for dog walkers, and parents with wailing 2 year olds who want “out”). I am not a fan of the NCC-style bench-up-tight-to-the-path solution, and benches are expensive to install and maintain. Instead, I’d like to see stonedust-paved bulb-out areas that lead rest-takers 10′ or so off the path, where they are less likely to get run over by MAMILs (middle-aged men in Lycra), and can relax, sitting on large flat boulders as benches. The City has a generous stockpile of these rocks heaped up along Pinecrest Creek transitway just north of the Qway. Let’s put ‘em to good use here…

4. the path needs to be lit, with ped-scaled light fixtures, like at the east end of Corkstown bridge over the Rideau Canal, or along the Albert Street MUP just west of Bronson. Parts of the area along the O-Train corridor are “behind” warehouses etc and need to be lit up to enable their use by women and people with various sensitivities towards safety. This path will eventually form a very important and busy feeder link to the Bayview Station as well as a link to BikeWest and the ORP. We can’t afford not to light it.

well-lit Albert MUP

5. the city is apparently considering a fancy 21′ staircase structure on the north side of Somerset, by the City Centre complex, for peds to access the path, and for cyclists who are gung ho to carry their bikes up the stairs instead of riding around to the south side. This stair costs lots of money, I would rather it be spent on extending the first phase path all the way to Gladstone; leave the stair to the future. The stair, BTW, is because some think it “too dangerous” for westbound cyclists to cross the street without a traffic light to access the bike path staring from the south side of Somerset …

6. Similarly, at Gladstone, the path would come out right by the billboard on the NE corner of the rail overpass. Last time I talked to the City, they were alarmed at the idea of installing curb cuts here so that cyclists could access the street to cycle onwards, or to cross the street: “But there is no traffic light there, it’d be too dangerous”. Fie on that. Put in a bit of chicane or maze to slow down cyclists so they don’t speed across Gladstone. Or put in a half-light, with activator buttons 150′ down the trail on each side. But don’t “promote” cycling by forcing them to dismount and carry their bike over the curb to get to the  -eventual -  continuation of the path on the other side…

7. the city-owned right of way along the O-Train is quite wide between Gladstone and Bayview Station, I’d like to see it all treated as parkland. This means rough landscaping it all, demarking the boundaries to prevent encroachment by dumpsters, dumpers, and vehicles. And to prevent adjacent building sites from encroaching onto the public realm for “staging”. Given the wide open nature of the area, with no overhead wires, I’d like to see the area planted with big trees — burr oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, and other large-growing trees. If the city can’t afford to do it, supply a few planting beds and let the community plant tree seedlings. I wouldn’t like to see the city ‘cheap-out’ by leaving the O-train corridor as a untended unloved industrial track wasteland, to be clear-cut every decade or so to keep down nature. This is a prime green connector between the Ottawa and Rideau River ecosystems, we should be proud of it.

7b. The Bayview Station designs all show water run off from the station roof being directed down stone channels to the valley floor. I’d love to see a proper water run-off storage pond built, to moderate run-off and reduce flooding, and because they are attractive and good for urban wildlife (ducks, raccoons, etc).

8. the Bayview Station design is an amazing shape-shifter. Every time we see it, it has moved to a new location, with its main entrance at the OTrain level, no at the Albert level, no it’s on the bridge, etc etc. Pretty much constant in the latest designs has been a delightful accommodation of the north-south cycling route, sometimes it even runs right through the station (the non-fare-paying part). It is important that this cycling link be kept, and that it be rideable (not a “dismount and walk your bike” zone)*, shareable, and generous sized.

8b. as the bike path ascends from the valley floor up to the Bayview station platform level, the slope should be long, and gentle, with a generous “flat” zone as riders approach the station. This will require more fill to construct the long slope, and thus more expense, but the path and slope must be visible from top and bottom, and from the Otrain platform, to conform with principles of Crime Prevention through Evironmental Design (CPTED)

9. this north/south bike path (oops, MUP) also needs to connect well with the E/W bike path proposed for construction in 2017 along the north side of the LRT line from Bayview underpass to LeBreton Station to the downtown.

10. could the NCC please, pretty please, complete the Bayview Station to ORP link at the same time, in 2013, as we all know they are bustin’ a gut to close the Preston Extension (and if they don’t do it, the LRT people are telling us they will, as early as 2013, for our own safety, to keep us out of the LRT right of way).

11. can the City please do the southward sections in 2013, so that cyclists can get over Gladstone, to join the existing path along the OTrain, up to Carling, where a half-light crossing is due to be installed in 2012-13, enabling cyclists to join the driveway paths or go south to Carleton, Mooney’s Bay, and other destinations?

the 1963 section of the path, from Young to Carling, is plowed in the winter

There are lots of other considerations for the pathway design. The group discussions at the PACs are often fun and educational. They really bring out the truism that together everyone achieves more.

__________________________

*for those that care, the last station design for Tunney’s showed the Bikewest path as interrupted by the Station waiting areas, and it definitely looked like it was a “stop, dismount, and walk your bike” zone rather than a ride-through-shared-space-carefully zone. Sigh.

Bike shelter at Bayview Station

OC TRANSPO has installed the new bike shelter at Bayview Station.

It does not have a glass wall on the “back” side of it, but nor is the back side readily accessible for cyclists while there is loose dirt/mud. Presumably, if no glass back wall is installed, and the grass grows, some cyclists can use the rack from the back side but at the cost of losing out on the roof.

Is it safe to suggest this is another one-sided front-in only bike shelter? In which case, it holds six bikes. After we spend millions on the new Bayview LRT and indoor-transfer-by-escalator to the O-Train platform, the city plans to increase bike parking capacity to eight bikes.

One of the best things about installing these shelters now, several years before the LRT opens, is that it may help establish the correct number of bike spaces that needs to be provided. Of course, patronage will be different after the conversion to LRT, and after a several year hiatus when the transitway is closed, in order to be converted to LRT, during which time the shelter will be unused. And of course, anyone counting bikes has to wander away from the station, as for stations such as LeBreton, few people park their bikes at the station but a number do several blocks away, on the residential streets, where presumably seeing eyes make parking safer.

I think the best bet for OC Transpo is to reinstall some of the freestanding, unroofed metal bike racks near the shelters, for “overflow” parking. In this way, they get a readily visible measure of how far short of demand they are falling. If there are no adjacent bike racks or posts, they won’t have a visible measure of their shortfall as people may park further away, or not bring their bikes at all.

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PS did anyone notice that this bike shelter increases the total Bayview Station shelter space  by about 50%?

OC Transpo provides better bike parking

Users of the main transitway stations will have noticed that some bike parking racks have been shoved aside from their usual locations. Then concrete pads have been poured. Only at Baseline Station did I notice a sign identifying what is going on: new bike racks. Kudos to OC for providing better bike parking.

In the pic below notice the new shelter, the moderately strong bike racks, and in the distance, the numerous bikes attached to the shoved-aside racks that are no longer bolted to the ground (and the background, the free employee parking lot attached our municipal office building).

And here is a pic of the shelter in use, on Thursday. Recall that it absolutely poured rained most of the day. And that not only were there 12 lucky bikes in the shelter, but a dozen in the older racks:

A new (smaller) concrete pad has also been poured at Bayview Station; presumably a new rack  or shelter is en route for there too.

Observation 1: there were way more bikes than the shelter can accommodate. Will the old racks, currently not bolted down to the pavement, be left there (hopefully bolted down), or does OC Transpo feel this is enough parking space?

Observation 2: for the new OLRT transitway stations, the planning team imported a consultant from the US of A to advise them on how many bike parking spaces are required at each station. As reported in earlier posts, I thought these numbers low for the current ridership, let alone the future. If these shelters represent the planned capacity, then it is good (provided someone notices…) to find out before the LRT stations are built that their bike parking estimates are too low.

Observation 3: Will someone from OC or the City note how cyclists get to the parking posts? At Baseline, it is possible to cycle up to the station from the west or south; but from the east cyclists are supposed to (but will they actually do so in practice??) walk their bikes along a few hundred feet of sidewalk first. Much better to accomodate what people want to do than to imagine they will perform to the engineer’s fantasy.