The city giveth ...

I rejoice when the City provides some nice landscaping in Dalhousie neighborhood. The City owns some temporary parking lots along Albert Street, between Bronson and the transitway turnoff at the Good Companions centre.

They spent some time last month rigorously pruning and thinning the existing tree and shrub growth around the lots, possibly to improve the social safety of the parking lots by making them more open and exposed.

Then they added some topsoil, mulch, and planted a dozen trees at the entrance of the lot, which faces Brickhill Street (a tiny street that services the parking lots and connects to Old Wellington). I have never seen such tiny (skinny) trees planted by the City (some of the trees were larger caliber, some were mere whips).

I am curious though, why the trees were planted in a area that is planned for redevelopment, including major equipment staging area for  the DOTT project (if it gets the go-ahead), where there are no nearby houses and few people to see or enjoy the trees, while the City steadfastly refuses to plant trees along the new multipurpose path running from the same transitway/Albert intersection westwards to Bayview station.

The Little Park that could (n't?)

Several previous posts have featured this little garden strip at 301 Preston, immediately north of the Queensway in Little Italy. It was installed several years ago when part of the playing fields at Commerce / Adult HS were removed and paved over as pay parking lot.

During the construction of Preston, I have seen giant steel trench boxes, outhouses, lumber, hoses, tools, you name it, all stacked or dumped on the garden. Yet each time the junk was removed, the garden plants (lillies, grass, few shrubs) resurrected themselves.  This last set of damage is more fatal. Whole sections of garden were removed for the installation of a new fire hydrant and sewer access hatch (person-hole?).  If you look closely at photo two, the tree has been removed -- roots and all -- from the garden left towards the back on a tilt. There is no sign the plants or shrubs were kept.

The Preston Street BIA plans to enlarge the garden in future, to take up the whole zone from the fence to the sidewalk. It will be very welcome.

Put my foot in it ...

I have been known to put my foot in it ... some may feel I always do. But in this case, it was literally not figuratively.

I was walking on the new sidewalk along Preston at Primrose - you know, the one with the missing sections and occasional mountain goat sections where you have to leap over walls, scramble up gravel mounds, etc. I steped into an area of sidewalk that had been filled around a utility hatch. It was a good foot below the finished sidewalk level so I got some good momentum. Alas, the cement there was not dried and I left a souvenir footprint. A few hours later I noticed the dimpled wet cement now had two safety cones on it.

The hazards of being a blogger...

East Berlin, c1976

There are lots of stories in the papers and MSM these days about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After graduating from University I went backpacking in Europe for a few weeks. Airfare was $640 on a 747; it is not much more today for advance purchases.

I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. It was compulsory to convert some West Marks into East Marks at the (poor) official exchange rate. It was not permitted to reconvert the East Marks upon exiting the "Democratic Republic". I had to wait for several minutes at the crossing while the guards photocopied my passport and visa (chargex?) card. [Is it filed in Stasi archives somewhere?]

After strolling about the main square, visiting the big department store, being chased everywhere by people wanting to buy my Quebec jeans or convert money, seeing the Pope's Revenge, etc, I took the metro to a distant stop with the intention of walking back for a half day just to see the non-downtown parts of the city.

I got off near Treptower Park (?) where there was a huge Soviet War Memorial and cemetary. Many of the neighborhoods were built in "super blocks", the latest socialist urban layout. Each block was huge and would encompass several of our city blocks. Each one consisted of peeling-stucco identical dirty gray apartment blocks around the perimeter, with some more towers in the mid block. A few units had balconies, most did not. In the centre was a park and primary school. A sidewalk ran around the perimeter of the superblock, and then there was a boulevard space between the walk and the road surface. The boulevard was thickly planted with shrubs and had one or two barbed-wire fences in it. Crossing the street was only possible at the corners and one mid-block crossing. Several superblocks were connected at mid-block crossings to feed into a high school. Around this neighborhood of superblocks ran very wide barren boulevarded avenues, often with no crossings and lots of barbed-wire in the shrubs. The system was designed to keep kids "safe" in a sanitized zone. While understandable in a society traumetized by war and oppression, the resulting urban grid was dreadfully depressing.

I stopped in at a small bakery on a street. My friend and I talked in English, looking at the buns. The few other shoppers, all women, all in dowdy coats and kerchiefs, looked alarmed and left, shuffling along the wall behind us to get to the door. The shop keeping lady pulled down the blinds in the window. We selected our "lunch" and she refused our payment of East Marks, putting her hands behind her, her back crazy-glued to the rear wall behind the counter, her face twisted in .. fear? As we left, she locked the door behind us. I hadn't exactly considered myself an intimidating person until that time.

Slow Progress

Minto built these stacked townhouses (a two or three-storey unit above a two storey unit, each with sidewalk-level private entrances) a few years ago. Earlier this summer, there was a fire in one of the units.

The whole row of houses was evacuated, and remains empty to this day. Some units are boarded up at the rear. Others sit with six month's accumulation of grime and dust on the windows and porches.

The units are wood-frame construction. There is not a sprinkler system. In addition to townhouse-looking stacked units, a number of low-rise apartment buildings in the city are also wood-framed (hint: usually three or four floors).

The long period when these units are closed makes me wonder what happened to the occupants. Are they all in temporary apartment-hotels? That will be expensive; did they have insurance to cover this? And just how many personal possessions did residents get to take out? I would be unhappy to be kept out of my home for six months or a year. It would make a huge disruption in my life. Will the wedding pictures and kid's birthday pictures be unkeepable when exposed to smoke damaged housing for half a year? Will moving back reinstate the sense of being "home", or will people be alienated from their former lives?

The for sale sign on an adjacent row of houses makes me wonder what happens to residents of the damaged units who have to "move on" to other jobs or other cities or find its time to move to a different house. How do you unload an uninhabitable house? Indeed, will owners in adjacent undamaged units be able to sell, or is their property value depressed by the presence of fire-damaged units? Some buyers probably won't notice the closed units; others would be scared off by the signs of fire damage.

BikeWest Report available to download

The current version of the BikeWest document is available to download from here:  http://www.ericdarwin.ca/BikeWestReport.doc  It is a fairly large file as it has a lot of pictures along the proposed route. It took me almost 30 seconds to down load it.

Dalhousie Community Assoc responds ...

Wearing my other hat, and with much input from other members of the Dalhousie Community Association board, the DCA sent two letters. One to the Marie Lemay of the NCC regarding the bad idea for bringing Rapibus to Ottawa over the POW bridge; and the other is detailed comments on the current state of the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel study.

You can read both of these letters at http://www.dalhousiecommunityassociation.blogspot.com/

Tea and Chips

Lunch time crowds outside Minto Place on Albert Street at Kent. The tea pot is titanium. The chips are fried. The stomachs ... are iron.

Smells like Lawyers

St Mary school was one of the Little Italy and Civic Hospital neighborhood english-catholic french-immersion grade schools for west siders. My daughter went there (that was years ago...). The school was small, but attracted a local clientele and was not closed in part because the alternative catholic school was not perceived by parents as being an attractive choice. Over time, the board eroded the school, removed the french-immersion program, and eventually managed to kill the school. It is now a teacher ed centre, I think. The building sits on a huge block also occupied by another school building (rented out to a succession of private schools) and a church.

The sandy area in the picture above used to be the play structure. It was physcially built by parents and kids one Saturday. The kids moved materials and tools around, goggled at the cement mixer, and were excited and helpful. The parents and kids and teachers had fund-raised for two years to get our third share of the twenty-thousand dollar cost. The other thirds were from the school board and the city. The school board was responsible for maintenance.

We soon discovered what the board's maintenance policy was. Was a wooden post chipped or splintered or cracked? Tear down the whole piece of equipment ! I was so naively astonished that repairs were not in their vocabulary, that maintenace meant only removal. The first bits of structure were gone within a year. The big platforms, ramps, slides, monkey bars ... all evaporated, bit by bit, each summer vacation.

Then the school closed. No kids ... what do they need a play structure for? The last elements, including the ever-popular zip line, are gone. The rented school building is fenced off.  Now there is just a giant kitty-litter zone. I suspect that I see the narrow-minded influence of lawyers here ... it is not a school, there should not be a playground feature, it might attract kids which would mean liability issues, better to tear it down. They have not (yet) locked the gates to the grassy fields remaining. I am sure they are working on that.

NCC to Quebecers: Back [on the] Bus

 

Proposed modernist Bayview LRT station is elevated and long. The proposed STO bus terminal would be off the left. Click to enlarge photo.

Planning in a Federal capital region is not just about good planning on utilitarian "planning' terms. A good chunk of it is political planning and symbolism too.

In the past,  separatist elements in Quebec made hay from the disparate images of the Quebec side of the river (low rise, lower income housing, industrial mills) and the Ottawa side of the river (shiny high rises set high on a green hill). They drew a direct line to the federal purse, discrimination, second class status, etc.

The response from the Feds was politically / symbolically motivated. The Portage Bridge appeared, the Ottawa River Parkway was rerouted so that Wellington appeared to go directly to Hull while Ontario users had to "turn" to continue in Ontario. High rise cubicle farms sprouted on the Quebec side. Museums and prestige buildings materialized. Confederation Boulevard.

The major planning decisions for roads, transit, and buildings, in the Ottawa-Gatineau area have traditionally had a strong Federal political element.

Today, I fear the Feds are about to step in la merde in a rather big way.

Ottawa planned and built its transitway (bus rapid transit, or BRT) a few decades ago. It was a reasonable decision for the size of the city as it was then. It was always designed to be convertible to LRT, which is where we are heading now. On the Quebec side, the City is now planning and constructing its own BRT system called Rapibus. I presume that Gatineau is making a rational decision given its population density, geographic area, costs, etc.

The problem comes in the downtown area where the two systems -- LRT and BRT -- will meet.

There is currently a front-running proposal in the NCC-chaired interprovincial transit study to bring the Rapibus system over to a terminal in Ottawa. If the Prince of Wales railway bridge is rebuilt as a two-lane BRT for STO buses (a repeat of the Alexandra Bridge solution adopted almost half a century ago) the national unity optics are terrible: English commuters ride sleek and shiny LRTs to the downtown, French commuters ride old-technology diesel buses to the periphery where they are then permitted to transfer to the LRT.

Election 2020: If I were the PQ, I'd be snapping pictures of the two modes from an aerial point over the Ottawa River looking south, ie the view from Quebec. It would show the Federally-funded bright red trains entering the modern very long elevated glass and steel Bayview Station, and Quebecers shuffling past bus shelters on their traipse through wind-whipped snow to get to first class transit.

Of course, the national unity side could score with a slightly different system: build the LRT line over the POW bridge to stop at Terrace de la Chaud and then run along the surface of Rue Principale to Place du Portage. Then the picture shows Federal money delivering the smart-growth green technology of the future to the voters of Quebec. I'd even paint the LRT vehicles on the first part of this great circle loop in STO colours, regardless of who operated them.

Which picture will the NCC be setting up?

Conversion to Transitional Housing

This elderly blue-clad apartment building on Holland Avenue just north of the Queensway has been purchased by the Ottawa Mission for use as transitional housing. Acording to Ms Vicki's neighborhood blog the Mission intends for its clientele to occupy about half the units. She does not identify who will occupy the other half - presumably it is market rentals.

I support the move to transitional and supportive housing. I strongly feel they need close supervision and much more "tough love" than laissez-faire.

I have three "second hand" experiences with apartment buildings undergoing similar changes. In one, my aunt was a long term tennant, along with mostly elderly people in a very stable market-rental building. A social agency bought the building and moved in a "few" clients graduating from mental health programs. Under the new owners, the building quickly fell into disrepair, the hallways dirty, vomit in the elevators, smelly stiarways, people ("weirdos") hanging about the entrances. The fire alarms went off 5 times a night. A special client was found to be doing it. He was not removed but counselled to take his medicine. The exodus of the middle class tennants accelerated, eventually my aunt moved too.

The second story is from Toronto, the Crombie Town area near St Lawrence Market. It was a mixed income building. My relative found it safe and a great place to live. Then the City started closing out Regent's Park, a notoriously bad housing project, for rebuilding. The mixed income nature of other buildings was "waived" to find room for the displaced Regent's tennants. The balanced mix of incomes, employment status, etc was lost. Security guards appeared. Taxis refused to pick up residents at the door; later they refused to drop off residents near the doors. Pizza deliveries stopped, it was too dangerous. Long term tennants fled. Gangs of menacing males clustered around the doors.

The third incidence is an elderly female aunt who lived in a high rise senior's housing building in downtown Ottawa. She enjoyed it, and the nearby Legion. Then the City (?) moved in a younger crowd. There were noise problems, rowdy parties, spaced out tennants, rumours of drug deals. She died before she could move out.

These three exemplars in my life will outweigh any number of unknown happy cohabitations in buildings. They will influence how I read and interpret "statistics" about the success (or not) of transitional and supportive housing. I note/recall stories I read in the MSM or blogs about crime in similar housing projects whether on Scott Street or in LA. As a result of these influences, I still support these housing measures but that support is dependent on strict on-site supervision. Unfortunately, such supervision will wax and wane with social work trends/fads/philosophies and the leadership (which changes over time) of the agencies involved. The housing never goes away. It does make me nervous.

Landscaping takes root on Preston

One of the true joys of the new streetscaping on Preston street in Little Italy is the abundance of landscaping. The architect has done a marvellous job of squeezing in hundreds of trees (many of small mature size, to fit into small pockets of space) and generous shrub beds. This bed was installed in the spring 09 on part of the street already rebuilt. The rich green shrubs in the foreground are backed up by bright red taller shrubs in the back. This is a pattern repeated in a number of blocks along the street, and is rich in colour and texture all summer and fall.

I usually feel the city is way too timid in its landscaping, reluctant to add or even replace trees because the spaces are "too small" or interfere with sight lines for traffic. The Preston Street experience is refreshing, as it demonstrates that aggressive planting works. I find it interesting to compare Preston with West Wellington in Hintonburg. Preston has way more "soft" landscaping squeezed into corners and in front of buildings. Some of this is due to the lower density of Preston, some is due to the choices of the BIA and community associations that had input into the plans.

LaRoma patio

La Roma restuarant on Preston Street in the heart of Little Italy applied to the committee of adjustment to open a patio on the small rear upper deck of the premises, facing the residential portion of the side street. It was approved by the CofA for a 12 seat deck, provided they put up a higher fence (the original metal railing is visible) and allow patron access only from the interior, not the firestairs.

Meanwhile, millions of dollars of your water bill payments are being spent to redo Preston Street at the front of the building, where the restuarant has a narrow open front porch occasionally used for dining. The new streetscaping in front of the restaurant will be about 20' wide. The wide sidewalks were installed to permit front patios that animate the streetscape.

Infill on Bell & Christie Streets

This infill project in Dalhousie is just about all complete. The sod is down, slender tree saplings planted, backyard fences completed. The building faces Christie and reads as semi-detached. The presence of side doors that are celebrated with wide steps, fancy door sets, and a little peaked roof suggest otherwise. In fact, the units can be used as a three storey unit with large ground floor rec room or the ground floor can be closed off leaving a two storey unit above with a balcony, and a small independent unit on the ground floor with its own door to the side of the building and access to the rear yard.

I am surprised to see front facade garages. City planners discourage or forbid them in our neighborhood now. The infill is on a formerly vacant lot that had a lot of small tree and weed growth on it -- either overgrown or naturalized, depending on your point of view -- and a fair share of garbage.

The builder went to considerable effort to use some quality exterior finishes (not plastic siding). The ground floor is "stone" and the upper floors stucco. The presence of horizontal belt lines addssome character and improves the scale and massing. The windows are higher than wide -- nothing looks more incongruous than "renovations" or infills with suburban-style wide windows. City policy actually discourages infill units from being built in the same architectural style as its neighbors from the 1920s, claiming these are "faux" references. If well done (and that's a big if) faux historic infill is fine with me.

Specimen Testing on Preston Street

I know an Olympic medal triathlete who complains not about the training, the odd hours, the inhospitable facilities, etc, but about the random pee tests. The testers come any day, any time, although she thinks they have a preference to come Saturday nights right after she has just had a potty break. Then they get to sit around for an hour in her apartment while she drinks water until they can observe her fill a specimen bottle.

Sidewalks and curbs on Preston Street also undergo specimen tests. Here are three containers of concrete taken from sidewalk pours on Preston at the corner of Elm Street. They are used to prove the correct type of concrete was used, and can trace any problems with the finished sidewalk back to the original concrete mix vs subsequent damage from abuse or other conditions after the sidewalk was laid.

"Cafe" update on Preston

The house conversion at 424 Preston to a "cafe" continues. Notice that since the pictures last week, the front foundation wall has been insulated and back filled, and insulation placed on top of the new floor. The presence of rebars suggests that concrete stairs and and concrete floor are to poured in place. This foundation finishing work has all been done since the photo posted last Friday which clearly shows the paper in the front window.

The paper in the window is a city "stop work" order, as the renovation lacks building permits, approvals, etc. A portion of the interior has been gutted and I gather a number of structural changes have been made. Is the renovation for residential use (no rezoning etc) or a cafe?

Infill Mixed Use development

Watching construction on Preston Street itself is further complicated by the similtaneous construction of this infill mixed-use development. There will be storefronts along the Little Italy widened sidewalk, and six apartments (rentals) above. The building is steel frame with wood construction.

Along with the camera-person, there was the usual collection of sidewalk superintendants out all day, every day, ensuring that someone else gets to work. And there is lots to see. This photo shows a three-wheeled fork lift that came piggy-backed on the long flatbed truck, it has picked up a load of floor trusses and is carrying them over the top of the parked pickup truck and will deliver them to the work site.

Underutilitzed lot on Champagne

Half way along Champagne Avenue is this drastically underutilized lot behind a 1960's-era apt building. The lot is used for surface parking, and is not a desirable long-term use of valuable urban land. Given that it has street frontage along Champagne, I expect someday the owners will apply to relocate the parking underground and build condos -- either apartment condos or townhouse condos -- along the street. Depending on the condition of the existing apartments, they may even demolish the building and start anew.

BikeWest on CKCU radio

I was interviewed by Danny Ghosen   of CKCU radio (Carleton U), on BikeWest, a week or so ago. Danny is from The Netherlands, the world's most condusive nation for cycling. He is in a state of shock at the conditions cyclists are supposed to ride in here. "Riding a bike on Bronson Avenue ... you've gotta be nuts" he told me in a conversation before the interview.

Click the link to listen to the interview. Unfortunately, the first few seconds and intro are not on the tape:
http://www.ericdarwin.ca/CKCU_Interview_1.mp4

Out with the old, in with the condos

The printing establishment currently located at the corner of Hickory Street and Champagne Avenue is the only remaining industrial use in this section of the Bayview-Champagne corridor. It once was an industrial heartland of the city, with convenient rail access (the tracks were relocated into the cut in 1963, before that they ran at street level). The old Sunoco fuel depot site has been cleaned up and is currently zoned for a 40,000 sq ft building. The former Campbell Iron and Steel plant at the corner of Carling/Champagne (now a satellite parking lot for the Civic Hospital) is in process to become several office towers (see earlier blogs on 853 Carling Ave) once the Bayview-Carling CDP is completed.

I hear the printing plant site pictured will soon be reincarnated as six townhouses facing Hickory and a eight storey condo facing Champagne. I imagine the neighbors will object, as some are already upset at the Merion Square townhouses and one condo tower (soon the second tower will be built). In my opinion, they are lucky, since the vacant and underutilized lands on the edge of their neighborhood are perfect for intensification (close to transit, have separate street access to the busy arterial Carling Avenue, and on the edge of the existing low rise neighborhoods but not in the middle). By building along the perimeter of this established area there will be less disruption to the existing areas and less pressure for intensification within the existing areas.

And recall too that the area immediately south of Carling, currently a green field running up to the Sir John Carling building, is zoned for mixed use high rises, but we wont see that for another three decades.

East Side of Champagne Avenue

The park at the corner of Beech and Champagne. It has bocce courts, playing fields (shown with ice-rink boards just delivered), a bicycle-polo park, and on the far side a play structure. The line of trees in the background is along the OTrain cut. Most of these trees will be lost when the cut is widened for the second phase of LRT construction, should the SW LRT service actually get built. This park could easily be expanded to the east by covering the cut with concrete girders and a playing field. The area on the other side of the cut is the north-south multipurpose path and narrow parkland corridor.

The Champagne animal shelter will be abandonned when the new shelter is finished out the 'burbs. The land will be sold, another excellent location for condos, with easy access to transit and the busy Preston Street of Little Italy, and with views to the Lake and downtown. The Bayview-Carling CDP will determine the degree of intensification, if the developers don't built it before the plan is resurrected.

Another house becomes a "cafe"

The conversion of residences to commercial continues in Little Italy. This house has had its front yard blown out and an enlarged basement put in. Presumably some new building will appear on top of the new foundation. I hear it will be another "cafe", a number of which exist already on Preston Street. I am especially amused by the cafe's that do so little visible business during the day but draw curtains over the windows and seem to be busy well into the night.

In the picture above, the black landscaping fabric is being installed in excavations being dug for tree planting wells in the new wider sidewalks as part of the streetscaping plan for Preston. The sign posted in the window may or may not be a building permit. Such details often do not bother developers getting in on Ottawa's next hottest neighborhood. The new location of the Black Cat Cafe (with no curtained windows at night) is on the left.

Winter comes

The skating rink boards have been delivered to Plouffe Park, behind the Plant Recreation Centre along Preston Street in Little Italy. Good bye soccer, hello hockey.

Champagne Ave condo site on the market

The Acquerello condo was in pre-sales several years ago but did not sell enough units to go ahead with construction. It was located at  the corner of Hickory Street and Champagne Avenue, one block south of the Carling Avenue O-Train station. The proposed building was quite large and offered nice layouts with views of Dows Lake and the downtown plus easy access to rapid transit.

The lot is now back on the market. Domicile has proved there is a market for condos at this location, with his first tower at "Merion Square" built, and another two condo towers nearing construction. With the City's continued push for instensification, I expect whoever buys the site will try to increase the density or height to take advantage of the views and location. One way to increase the FSI is to cover-over the OTrain cut to increase parkland as a tradeoff for more height.

Unfortunately, the City's Bayview-Carling CDP for the area along the OTrain was aborted several years ago. By the time it gets resurrected, all the larger vacant lands along the OTrain will already have development proposals. See previous blog postings on 855 Carling Ave, the lot next door.

More Concrete Progress on Preston Street in Little Italy

On the residential portions of Preston Street the streetscaping is less fancy. A monolithic (one piece) concrete sidewalk + curb is poured in one go using wooden forms that were pegged in place a few hours before.

The old lampposts are now in the middle of the new sidewalk. They won't be pulled out until the new lamp posts with efficient "shoebox" overhead light fixtures and lower level decorative lighting fixtures are connected and working. Until then, the missing concrete squares will be filled with temporary asphalt patches. Then in Spring 2010, at the same time as the crosswalks are installed, the missing squares will be poured. The old post used to be on the "far side" of the old sidewalk, which just goes to show how "street narrowing" sometimes results in street widening, in this case to accomodate 53' tractor trailers turning the corner.

Preston Street

Until those new sidewalks are completed, pedestrians take their life in their hands to pick their way through the muddy construction sites to reach their homes or schools. I am constantly amazed at how fast drivers go through the utter chaos that is Preston Street -- one lady I saw yesterday was actually dialing her cell phone while driving too fast through the Gladstone-Preston intersection which was being dug up for the 45th time this year.

Goodbye Baseline Station

The old Baseline transitway station has been retired, replaced by one immediately to the west. The old location will become the site of new building with the transitway underneath it. The glazing was removed from the station shelters and the steel is being scrapped. The shelters are 25+ years old and not worth relocating.

Demolition of the concrete central structure at the station.

Steel and concrete and asphalt are separated for recyling.

The new station has side platforms rather than a centre-island design. A regular user of the station told me this morning that she much prefers the new side platforms, as being simpler to navigate.

Concrete Progress on Preston Street in Little Italy

In the commercial parts of Preston Street the sidewalks will consist of pavers and concrete squares, so curbs are poured first and the walks built later. Where parking insets are provided, the drainage continues to catch basins along a "flat curb" that helps define the travelled portion of the street (sometimes streets with bulb outs get visually confusing to motorists), and keeps water accumulation away from the sidewalks and snow-blocked road edges.

Metal stakes with a string are placed with the aid of survey equipment. The curb placement will be about 2m outside the string line. The new streetscaping will provide larger sidewalks for pedestrians and street animating cafe's in Little Italy.

Cement is poured through a convey belt to the curb former which is shown extruding the curb in place, much like toothpaste from a tube.

Look closely (click to enlarge picture) to see the finger that goes along the string, keeping the curb extruder aligned along the street. This is on St Anthony street by the Qway. The first pallets of paving stones have also be delivered to the site for constructing the sidewalks behind the curb line.

Main Stream Media (MSM) and Blogging

I received one email and one phone call from readers yesterday. Both were excitedly telling me that info I had blogged on had been picked up by MSM without credit to me. I tried, somewhat inarticulately, to explain why that didn't bother me.

Since I started blogging last April, several stories I wrote about promptly appeared in MSM, twice as headlines. I like to think my content is useful and fun, maybe that's why the site gets more than 3000 hits a month ( I want it to be higher, recommend the site to your friends !!).

 I have a number of sources of info. I network within the community. I am observant and see some things others don't. But when I post some "news" I am not the primary source. The MSM doesn't want to quote hearsay, they go back to the roots of the story. The MSM gets their news from a variety of sources, including blogs. I know a number of MSM that monitor my blog postings. Within hours of yesterday's post on BixiBike I had MSM calling me for details.

And that is how it should be. I don't own the news or events I write about. They are cast out into the public domain for consumption or rejection. I do hope to influence opinion and events, that is one reason I write. That it takes MSM several days to do its own report on something I wrote on (eg, bixibike, or POW bridge for rapidbus) is just fine, they do legwork, contact sources, add info and depth.

And I use the MSM for my inspiration too. For example, a Citizen story on burying the LRT if it used the Byron right of way, was a jumping off point for a new tangeant not followed or considered in the Citizen, ie the city might bury LRT only in affluent articulate neighborhoods but not in lower-income neighborhoods, thus municipal infrastructure continues to be a diagram of the political and economic influences when built. I try not to simply refer readers to others' articles (we all have way more reading potential than we can ever digest) but to build on the inspiration.

And in symbiotic continuation, the MSM takes the lead from my blog, I continue to be inspired by MSM. And all is well in the land.

Bixi Bike Service Expanding in Ottawa

  The experimental bike share/rental system in Ottawa-Gatineau will expand next year.

There are currently 4 stations - including the NAC, Musee de Civilization, and ByWard Market. The sleek bikes have 3 speeds in an internal hub (protected), an internal chain (no greasy stains on your pants or sox), adjustable seats, head and tail lights, and of course a distinctive shape.

The system will be expanded to 50 sites, but whether this is all next year or over several years is not yet clear. Sites have to be reasonably close together to be useful, frequent, and at desired destinations. Presumably the operators want to expand beyond the tourist market and get frequent daily use by residents. In Montreal, bixi bikes are rented an average of 10 times per day.

I can image that the NCC will put stations at tourist sites. A difficulty I see is if someone cycles out to the museum of agriculture and parks their bike but then comes out and finds no bikes in the rack ... its a long walk back to the downtown or an expensive cab ride.

I found myself wondering where bike stations might go in the west side neighborhoods. First thoughts include
 - the War Museum,
- St Vincent Hospital (it is a major work site even if the patients already have their own wheels),
 - Cambridge/Somerset by the new Chinatown Arch so people can pop over to Chinatown for Dim Sum,
- 333 Preston as its a major employment centre and popular restaurant hub in Little Italy,
- Dows Lake/Commissioner's Park,
- the Booth St government office complex (ride a bike to see your colleagues at Treasury Board rather than using a taxi chit)(may double as a Commissioner's Park site),
- CMPA building or Otrain station at Carling, as an employment node and high density residential node (2 more 8 floor condo towers are coming to the site)
- Bayview Station (take the bus or train to the station, hop on a bike)
- Tunney's Pasture station
- corner of Holland/West Wellington, to access the restaurants and shops
- Civic Hospital

Any other suggestions? I'll add them to the list. It sure doesn't long to come up with 50 suggested locations!
Plant Recreation Complex
LeBreton Station

DOTT plans affect west side residents (xii): Booth Station

The Booth Street station is location directly under the new elevated Booth Street overpass. The overpass crosses over the station and the aquaduct. The new LRT alignment is a few meters south of the current transitway which is closer to the aquaduct. Most frightening about this drawing is the abundance of car traffic lanes on Booth, the awful manoevering required to get buses from the Booth St bus stop over to the centre lane to turn onto Albert to go uptown, and the generous addition of lanes to Albert Street in both directions. Somehow, a transit project is providing lots of expensive car commuter infrastructure and generous road widenings on prime downtown development land. Just who will rush to live in condos facing such over-sexed roadways? What happened to neighborhood connectivity, with these proposed huge automotive rips to the urban fabric of Dalhousie neighborhood.

DOTT plans - posts updated

Note that the previous nine or so posts on the downtown Ottawa transit tunnel (DOTT) and LRT project have now been updated to include some sketches and plans from the City and its consultants. I invite you to go back to look at the posts again, which may make more sense when illustrated.

As usual, click on each picture to enlarge it to full screen.

New Residential Building, Booth near Somerset

Shown is a interim elevation of the new senior's residence building proposed for the corner of Booth and Eccles Street, just south of Chinatown's main drag: Somerset Street. It has 42 residences, common facilities, a brick and well-detailed exterior finish. It complements the Somerset West Community Health Centre across the street. It should give a real boost to the appearance of Booth Street and the Dalhousie neighborhood as a whole. Anthony Leaning is the architect. Construction beings in 2010 for completion in 2011.

DOTT plans affect west side residents (xi): BikeWest

The city cycling plan includes conceptual improvements for cyclists heading west from the core towards Westboro. Councilor Leadman is fighting for improvements to the ill-designed Scott Street mixed-use path and a connection to the downtown. Cycling advocacy groups want better cycling facilities. The BikeWest plan proposes a segregated bi-directional cycling path on the north side of Albert and Scott from the downtown (Bronson Ave) to Westboro.

One of the original purposes of the BikeWest plan was to tie into all the construction projects planned along the Albert-Scott corridor. It is important not to construct anything that permanently blocks cycling improvements, even if the cycling improvements are not yet being built. It is also economic and thrifty to tie in cycling path improvements to new major road and LRT works planned along the corridor.

Working from the downtown west, the currently proposed DOTT plan does not adversely affect BikeWest between Bronson and Booth. It remains to be seen if city planners can be convinced to include BikeWest either along the north side of Albert or along the new grade-separated LRT alignment. The intersection of Booth at Albert remains a horror for local residents and the new intersection plans make it worse. It remains to be seen if the intersection can be scaled down, single-occupancy car motorists tamed instead of catered to.

In the latest DOTT plans the Preston extension will be built very early in the LRT construction process. This opens a few opportunities to facilitate the cycling experience in the E/W and N/S direction. It all depends on the willingness of council to direct that cyclists be treated seriously. However they design this road feature it is unlikely to create insurmountable cycling problems.

The Bayview Station design calls for a huge widening of the current transitway bridge over the OTrain cut. It would be economic to widen the bridge a bit more to include a segregated bike path beside the new station platforms. This would overcome the biggest hurdle for westbound cyclists: getting over the OTrain tracks. The current Albert St alignment has narrow sidewalks and very fast moving traffic that creates a cyclist-unfriendly environment. It is especially inconvenient for downtown-bound cyclists to get from the Scott path over the tracks to Albert Street.

At Tunney's, cyclists today are supposed to cycle on the north side of the Scott Street sidewalk/bus platforms. For much of the station length this is not a major problem with the current bus passenger volumes. However, when Tunney's becomes much busier it will be a major difficulty. Unfortunately, the current DOTT plan continues the unsatisfactory cycling-unfriendly  arrangement.

It is possible to do much better, and cheaply too. Recall that the new platform shelters for the LRT deep in the cut, will have roofs level with the ground at the Scott Street side. The City proposes a "green roof" here. They also propose widening the pedestrian overpass by 3x, while keeping the current elevator shafts, stairs, and exit buildings. It would not be difficult nor expensive to use the LRT platform roof as additional pedestrian areas, with entrance doors directly onto the new widened pedestrian bridges. This would reduce or eliminate the current exit that opens directly onto the bike path. While not ideal, since pedestrians would all have to cross the bike path at grade to get to the bus stops, it would be an improvement over the current plans.

Even better would be for the planners to sit down with cycling advocates for a few hours to hash out some ideas for reducing conflict. Note that the conflict with the sidewalk and station exists whether a bi-directional segregated bike path is built per the BikeWest model, or a uni-directional path is built along the edge of Scott Street itself. Opportunity knocks, will cycling be given a boost or a permanent block?

DOTT plans affect west side residents (x): Campus Station

The Ottawa U station on the new DOTT system will be located near the location of the current surface transitway Campus station. Recall that early plans had a new surface station here, but it made more sense to keep the LRT service in the tunnel longer to avoid having the trains climb to the surface and then descend again towards Lees Avenue, and the underground option also facilitates surface car traffic on the roads. This logical change to a better plan is, of course,  headlined as an example of wildly escalating DOTT costs, overruns, etc.

 (Note that this and other benefits to car traffic will be expensed as a DOTT expenditure, not charged to the general transportation budget. It is worth emphasizing because many of the DOTT expenditures will deliver great benefits to motorists (not the least of which is getting buses out of the downtown) but motorists will not pay a cent specifically for the benefits but can complain bitterly about the overly-expensive LRT).

The new Campus station will be located somewhat closer to the Canal than the current station. This shift is done to minimize surface road disruption during construction (car benefit!). But it generates some interesting benefits to residents of centretown. The station, like the others, will have two entraces. One will be a bit south of the current pedestrian underpass and Campus transitway station. The other will be a few hundred meters north. Most intriguingly, the north station entrance will be very close to the end of the new Corktown (Somerset Street) pedestrian and cyclist bridge. Recall that this much derrided and mocked bridge has proven very popular with residents, pedestrians, cyclists, and visitors, and resulted in new linkages between neighborhoods.

It is yet to be worked out if the new north entrance could be right at the eastern edge of the Corktown Bridge. This would make the Campus Station into a Golden Triangle station as well, and offer LRT service conveniently to City Hall, the Court House, and Elgin Street. The station access design is difficult here, with the various conditions attached to the Corktown Bridge design, the heritage status of the Canal, etc but it is exciting to consider the urban planning benefits of having one of the north entrances located right at the end of the bridge. (Does anyone else not feel there is something a bit wrong with the current handling of the bridge pedestrians and cylists that have to descend from the bridge to a at-grade road crossing, before ascending again into the campus? It always seems to me to be overly circuitous, inconvenient, and incomplete. Pedestrians go out of their way because the motorists come first).

I gather Ottawa U officials are ecstatic about the Campus Station design and entrance points. The DOTT LRT service will greatly improve the accessability and attractiveness of their business to all regions of the City.