Bikes everywhere or are my eyes deceiving me?

Recently there's been some ratcheting up of the complaints about the Laurier Avenue Segregated Bike Lanes (LSBL) in the local media. A recently formed coalition of citizens opposing the lanes claim that the city is fiddling with the number of users for the bike lanes and that these numbers are exaggerated. Today in the Ottawa Citizen one letter writer, incredibly, stated that only about 25 people use the lanes per day. I probably shouldn't have mentioned this comment because it's beyond ludicrous but this is the sort of thing being tossed around by bike lane opponents. Interestingly, a recent comment to this blog complained about having to deal with the "thousands of cyclists". Too many, too little...I guess they can't decide. On my way down Laurier West today I did a rack by rack count from Kent Street to Elgin Street. Every single rack, without exception, had a bike attached and most had two or more. In total, I counted 220 bikes. This does not include any bikes on any of the north or south running streets that were visible to me. Now imagine if all these cyclists were to drive instead! Where would they find the parking?

Bike launch pads on Laurier Avenue

If you have been down Laurier Avenue in the last few days you may have noticed these "launch pads". These pads will facilitate the turns of cyclists from the Laurier segregated lanes. According to the City of Ottawa, "To enable safe left turns for cyclists using the pilot facility, bike “launch pads” have been proposed at intersections in front of automobile traffic and pedestrian crosswalks. These launch pads would enable cyclists to safely perform a two-stage left turn: the cyclists would cross the intersection in the designated cycling lane, then would wait on the launch pad for the traffic signal to switch to allow movement on the cross street.

Originally these were going to be blue but green works for me too. This one is at Laurier and Bay but there will likely be more in the next few days. On inspection, they appear to be made of a skid resistant material that should last a good while. I am looking forward to sitting in my launch pad!

The cycling vote

Cycling is a hot topic in Ottawa at the moment.  Danish urban architect Jan Gehl held a talk at the Museum of Nature a few weeks ago and it attracted a standing room only crowd of urban cycling enthusiasts. His ideas on making cities cycling friendly should have been mandatory listening for our local municipal candidates. So where do all the mayoral and council candidates stand on the issue of cycling and cycling infrastructure?  Well, the Citizens For Safe Cycling put the question to them and the response and non-responses can be found here.

It is not hard to discern who will take cycling seriously when you read their comments.