Manifesto Multilinko

Thoughts on Downtown Moves and Ottawa's urban future

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:32:00 +0000

The January 18, 2012 Downtown Moves Open House was a low-key event with discussions around display panels and large printed maps of the study area.

I have posted photos of all the display panels (except for two where people put dots on their home & work addresses and problem areas for walking and cycling). ~~There was also a large handout with additional information that I will photograph and post online.~~

Here are the display panels: Downtown Moves - Open House Jan 18, 2012. UPDATE: Now includes the five sections of the large handout from the event, at the end of the photo set. ENDUPDATE

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to have a long chat with the city's planning lead on the project, Nelson Edwards. I spoke about the importance of having a lively streetlife, of having interest and activity in the lower three stories of buildings as they engage the street (Jan Gehl has said these lower levels are key, where people on the street can see what's going on above and vice-versa for people living above). Mr. Edwards has a very comprehensive perspective, but I worry that the Downtown Moves initiative is challenged with being all things to all people.

At its very core, it's about taking advantage of the buses being (partially) replaced by underground LRT, so that the study area (the Central Business District) can both adapt to the new pedestrian flows, as well as becoming a better urban environment as a whole.

You can get a sense of the challenge from the many, many "Strategic Directions" the project has declared for the study area:

Light Rail Transit Focused
Animated and Captivating
Competitive and Catalyzing
Rebalanced and Equitable - "We will increase the amount and quality of space on downtown street right-of-ways that serve pedestrians, cyclists and transit users."
Connective and Continuous
Liveable
Efficient, Flexible and Affordable
Active and Healthy
Green, Sustainable and Enduring
Capital Public Space
Safe and Accessible

That's a lot to ask from one study.

I think the core thing to understand about the CBD is that it is not a failure.
It was designed to be that paragon of Modernist planning: the single-use district. They believed in strict separation of their three functions: dwelling, work, and recreation. All to be tied together with their fourth function: transport.

In practice what this resulted in was people living in detached single family homes out in the suburbs, with work clustered in "office parks" downtown and along highways, and recreational areas separated from both.

They really thought that this idea of the city as a "machine" or "factory", where you would separate out each function and make it "more efficient" would lead to the best possible living, working, and playing environments.

The modernists also thought that all functions of the city planning should be separate with parks planning separate from traffic engineering separate from etc. etc.

Instead of this mechanistic, reductionist planning producing efficient paradises it created lifeless surburban zones where people stay inside their houses, connected to lifeless work zones where people stay inside their buildings, connected to recreational zones where people stay inside the stadium. And by "connected" meaning only highway upon highway as single-occupant cars rush from one "function" to another.

And the idea of buildings actually engaging with their environment, being in a specific place with people flowing in and out at ground level becomes so alien and lost that all your buildings turn inward, with dead exteriors surrounding interior food courts and shopping; buildings that could be dropped anywhere.

They were totally wrong. Hey, it happens.

But the result is most Ottawa families living a car commute away outside the greenbelt in cookie-cutter suburbs sprawling outwards, a CBD that cars and transit rush as quickly into and as quickly out of as possible at 9 and at 5, a hockey stadium out in the middle of nowhere, and endless expense on the car transportation (and to a much lesser extent transit) network needed to connect these far flung islands together.

Even the arts centre in the core of the city turns its back to the sidewalk, because who would ever arrive anywhere by foot? Instead it welcomes the car on the canal side, far away from the rabble of the street.

Plus which Rideau Centre in typical inward facing "special zone" fashion sucks up all the destination retail.

This would be hard enough if we had stopped doing it.
But most housing still goes beyond the greenbelt.
Most new buildings (e.g. 180 Kent) continue the same inward-facing food court mall placeless design that Place du Portage and L'esplanade Laurier exemplify.
New condos are dropped in as vertical suburbs, single-use residential zones that could be anywhere, with no engagement with the street.
And the entire thing is held together with a network of high-speed city core "arterial" roads that makes the entire downtown an offramp.

To unwind this deliberate 1960s successful design, we need to stop 50 years of assumptions, engineering and design. Many cities started doing this over two decades ago in the 80s and 90s. We have barely started to attempt it now, in the second decade of the 21st century.

It will be a long long walk home.

We've got the bones (and culture) of a small town with a couple main streets. We've got the housing of a small town that was packed with middle-class government employees. (See Residence Distribution of Civil Servants, 1947 from the Gréber Plan.) And we have the design of a wave of 1960s brutalism, "urban renewal", and Modernism, that left us with a city core stripped of inhabitants, a street rail system that was erased from the map, and the suburbs, malls and associated car infrastructure that swept across North American cities.

I see this most often in the endless discussions around Sparks.
Sparks had surface rail running down the middle, with destination shopping (the Apple Stores and Lululemons of their age) on either side. It connected Lebreton Flats to Lowertown and to the destination shopping on Rideau Street. It was surrounded by a dense grid of housing for civil servants, shop keepers and all the people who live in a typical central town.

Then they took away the rail, all the destination shopping went to Rideau Centre, they flattened Lebreton, Lowertown crumbled into a low-income disaster area (like most city cores), all the rest of the people living downtown fled to the suburbs, and they dropped cold inward-facing office towers around Sparks.

And people wonder why it doesn't work?
It's a wide pedestrian street that connects nothing to nothing, with no shopping and no people who live nearby. In a real world where people like to move along edges, and watch other people. Is this seriously hard for people to understand? It's a pedestrian street in the middle of what might as well be a suburban office park. OF COURSE NO ONE WALKS THERE.

Look at the reality

It's a bunch of offices (pink colour)

fed by a network of high-speed arterials (red lines)

Dedicated zones like this, with public space (that is to say, the streets) dedicated only to ensuring people can drive in and out AS FAST AS POSSIBLE are Dead by Design.

You might as well stand at a strip mall by the Queensway and wonder why it isn't like being in downtown Paris.

It will take decades of effort to unwind this. For example, the single biggest thing you can do to make this a place for the people who actually live there is to slow down traffic. It is insane to have high-speed traffic in a downtown core, a centre-ville. Over 30km/h, cars vs. pedestrians and cars vs. cyclists ends with dead citizens.

That means you have to signal to people, through road design (not through signage or laws, which people ignore), through the design of the streetscape itself, that they not on the safe wide highway, that they have to slow down and pay attention, that they are now not the lords of carland, they are visitors to a pedestrian zone.

Just that alone, trying to narrow and slow streets, returning them to their pre-1950s widths with attractive street features and enough uncertainty so that drivers go slowly with care, will be a huge, incredible fight. How do I know this? Because King Edward already tried to do this, and Bronson is trying to do it now, and the traffic engineers return instead with ever-wider, ever-faster, ever-more-highwaylike designs. This is not surprising, they are TRAFFIC ENGINEERS. Their purpose is to make the cars go faster and the traffic flow smoothly. Expecting them to produce traffic-slowing pedestrian designs is like expecting a pastry chef to design an aircraft carrier.

If the city believes "Rebalanced and Equitable" streets, that means rebalanced and equitable planning. That means for every traffic planner, there should be a pedestrian planner, a cycling planner, and a transit planner. That's how you actually get to "rebalanced".

This is not about hating cars or towers. This is about building a city, not a giant strip mall. Urban design is different from suburban design. The role of the car downtown is different. The way residential towers need to engage with the street is different. For that matter, the way people need to think about their city and move around it is different. There is a big risk that, as with the dead street life around the apartment towers full of thousands of people on Laurier west of Kent, if we drop more towers on Nepean and Gladstone near Elgin without using design and education to convey to people that they are in a city where they can walk around, shop, and live outside in the city, we'll just end up with a downtown that has "foot commuters" who pour out of residential towers, up into officer towers, and back again, without ever stopping to experience the city they're actually in.

If you think this is theoretical, there are thousands of units in condo towers already approved, with many of the towers under construction right now.

The only way I can see to chip away at this realistically is:
1) The city must hire more dedicated pedestrian, cycling and transit planners (it has already taken great stride in hiring cycling planning, but has zero pedestrian planners).
2) The city must convey the idea, both through explicit statements and implicit design, decade by decade, that cars are visitors to the downtown, not the owners of downtown, and that they are welcome only to the extent that they respectfully share public transportation space with other users
3) The city must have zoning it can ENFORCE, design it can ENFORCE, and plans that are actually followed, in a way that is comprehensible to ordinary humans (as opposed to the current situation where developers build whatever they want wherever they want to the lowest possible standard, and use layer upon layer of city, NCC and other planning documents to win their case every time at OMB)

There is so much more than even these basic steps. This is basically the project of the redevelopment of the entire urban design for the city. I am skeptical about what can be accomplished. I hope at least that it can move on three fronts, with small "popup" demonstration projects, enforced standards for new buildings, and a long term plan to make the city environment better as buildings are replaced and streets are upgraded.

You can reach Nelson at

Nelson Edwards
Planning and Growth Management Department
Infrastructure Services and Community Sustainability
City of Ottawa
110 Laurier Street West
Ottawa, ON
K1J 1P1
Tel: 613-580-2424 ext. 21290
Fax: 613-580-2459
e-mail: downtownmoves@ottawa.ca

You can sign up for the Downtown Moves mailing list.

The city's website section for the project itself is ottawa.ca/downtownmoves

This is a huge change in city direction. It needs every citizen pushing their councillors, city staff, and engaging in the planning process to help it happen.

Downtown Moves meeting January 18, 2012

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Downtown Moves, which is the new name for the Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay, is having its second meeting

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
5:30 to 8:30 pm
Ottawa City Hall, Jean Piggott Place, Main Floor
110 Laurier Avenue West

This is the second in a series of public events that will provide residents with an understanding of the study, what it hopes to achieve and how it will transform Ottawa’s streets over the next 20 years.

The short URL is ottawa.ca/downtownmoves

I'm using the Twitter hashtag #dottmo for the initiative.

The previous events were more like stage-setting presentations, they didn't really delve into the project itself and its goals.

What I would like it to be is: transforming the Central Business District (CBD) from a Monday-Friday 9am & 5pm commuter suburb in the core of downtown to a pedestrian-friendly 24/7 core with streetlife, connected to the Market, Centretown (south of the CBD) and Lebreton Flats.

What I expect it will actually be is: How can we move commuters coming to/from the LRT stations out of the way of cars and in/out of their work towers as quickly as possible, while making some minor concessions to the fact that there are no longer buses on Albert & Slater.

This is particularly important as Claridge and others have built a lot of condos in the area recently and are continuing. Just in the next few years another 2000 or more condo units will come online, mostly dropped into the CBD in giant towers.

In theory, Downtown Moves should take into consideration the Centretown Design Plan, most specifically the recommendations that the downtown core arterials (particularly Lyon, Kent, O'Connor and Metcalfe) be made two-way. However the study scope is so narrow (just the CBD, just related to post-LRT) that I fear the Design Plan ideas will be lost.

The short URL for the CDP is ottawa.ca/midcentretown

but most of the information is in their blog in particular their final post: The FINAL Centretown Community Design Plan Has Arrived! (I hope the blog is archived, as the site and URLs will surely expire at some point.)

There are many other relevant documents including the Pedestrian Plan and the Cycling Plan.

I thought Greenberg's presentation from the previous meeting was going to be posted online, but I can't find it. I captured an archive of the November events and livetweeted Greenberg: Downtown Moves - Nov 1-3 Twitter archive. His book Walking Home is excellent. Highly recommended. Covers how the suburbs ate the cities, and how we can walk our way back to lively, people-friendly urban design.

Ottawa has had no shortage of outside experts providing us excellent advice on modern urbanism. Where it falls apart is in two places: 1) Implementation using our actual city staff in our actual city 2) Funding and defending our decisions (e.g. enforceable zoning rather than development-via-OMB).

More on this later.

Paris neighbourhoods

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:07:00 +0000

The situation is confusing because there are both numbers with matching names (the 20 arrondissements) as well as names for different areas (districts / quartiers) which don't map directly to one arrondissement.

Sometimes when you're searching e.g. for hotels they will list only by arrondissement name, other times only by number, other times by area names. They're numbered in a spiral outwards - one through eight are kind of the inner core, after that they are progressively farther out.

Here are the numbers and names

1 - Louvre
2 - Bourse
3 - Temple
4 - Hôtel-de-Ville
5 - Panthéon
6 - Luxembourg
7 - Palais-Bourbon
8 - Élysée
9 - Opéra
10 - Entrepôt, previously called Enclos Saint-Laurent
11 - Popincourt
12 - Reuilly
13 - Gobelins
14 - Observatoire
15 - Vaugirard
16 - Passy
17 - Batignolles-Monceau
18 - Butte-Montmartre
19 - Buttes-Chaumont
20 - Ménilmontant

This is a very good quick guide, with maps: aviewoncities.com - Arrondissements of Paris

Here are some districts:

Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis (mostly in the 4th although the end of Île de la Cité is in the 1st)

Châtelet-Les-Halles - can refer to a major transit station, the area around it, or a broader area in the 1er and 2e around where the old market (Les Halles) used to be

Faubourg Saint-Honoré - street (and to some extent surrounding area) with famous shopping in the 8e

Bastille / Place de la Bastille - touches the corners of the 4e, 11e and 12e

Montmartre - in the 18e on and around the Butte-Montmartre

Le Marais - covers some parts of the 3e and the 4e

Saint-Germain-des-Prés / Faubourg Saint-Germain - in the 6th around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (see map and info Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés)

Odéon - in the 6th centred around the théâtre de l'Odéon (see map Quartier de l'Odéon)

Invalides & École Militaire - in the 7e around these landmarks

Montparnasse - in the 14e around the ~~cemetary~~ cemetery and tower, although may extend into the 6e and the 15e as part of the Boulevard du Montparnasse

Oberkampf (in the 11th)

Trocadero (in the 16e)

Latin Quarter - parts of 5e and 6e around the universities - see Quartier latin

Canal Saint-Martin (in the 10th and 11th along the canal)

Wikipedia - Paris Districts is a useful although incomplete guide. parislogue.com - Paris Neighborhoods is also useful.

Downtown Moves - Nov 1-3 Twitter archive

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:06:00 +0000

Below is the raw extract of tweets hashtagged #dottmo

Context: Ottawa.ca - Downtown Moves (Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay Study)

Most of them are from the Ken Greenberg talk, I have separated out earlier ones at the top.
These are in oldest first order.
(In case you're wondering how I did this, I took the Excel version of the Twitter archive I made, and sorted by ascending TweetID. then copied the text.)
Where the tweets are in order, just from me and the date is the same, I have removed my Twitter handle (@rakerman) and the time stamp.

Tweets from before Ken Greenberg's talk

@rakerman
2011-11-01T11:15:54-04:00
questions: how Centretown Design #ccdp2011 Mobility relates to Downtown Moves #dottmo & Sidewalk Summit #ssdh http://t.co/OE8p55rY #ottcity

I'm proposing #dottmo for Downtown Moves (hashtag = Downtown OTTawa MObility/MOves/Mobility Overlay) #ottcity

@rakerman
2011-11-02T20:29:26-04:00
@OTWPolitics I suggested hashtag #dottmo

@rakerman
2011-11-03T06:02:53-04:00
I will be using hashtag #dottmo for Downtown Moves / Mobility Overlay #ottcity

#dottmo MT @OTWPolitics: For those who can't make it to City Hall tonight, Ken Greenberg's talking urban rejuvenation on @CBCOttawa

@Centretowner
2011-11-03T08:19:33-04:00
RT @rakerman: I will be using hashtag #dottmo for Downtown Moves / Mobility Overlay #ottcity

@Centretowner
2011-11-03T09:10:47-04:00
Anyone else tweeting from Downtown Moves talk by Andrew Wiley-Schwartz? #Ottcity #dottmo #ottbike

@Centretowner
2011-11-03T09:12:44-04:00
Coun. @marianne4kanata talking about making our roads safer, and @JimWatsonOttawa signing Int'l walking charter #dottmo

@JimWatsonOttawa
2011-11-03T09:24:34-04:00
RT @Centretowner: Coun. @marianne4kanata talking about making our roads safer, and @JimWatsonOttawa signing Int'l walking charter #dottmo

@lana_stewart
2011-11-03T09:35:37-04:00
@Centretowner @rakerman They talk the talk... but will they walk the walk?? #ottcity #dottmo

@Centretowner
2011-11-03T09:39:06-04:00
AWS's #dottmo talk about what NYC did at Times Square reminds me of what #Ottcity did in the '60s with Sparks St

Ken Greenberg spoke November 3, 2011 at 7pm at City Hall.
Context: Ottawa.ca - Downtown Moves - Public Lecture Program

Ken Greenberg's talk

@rakerman
2011-11-03T19:01:15-04:00
#dottmo just opening - Ken Greenberg talking about book

#dottmo "we were swept up in a euphoria around the potential of the automobile"

#dottmo 1939 World's Fair - GM exhibit - "it seemed like a good idea at the time"

#dottmo "the hubris of that era... The automobile was at the heart of it"

#dottmo Disney Magic Highway USA 1958

#dottmo the summary of the Disney film is people were out of their minds (about cars) in the 1950s

#dottmo from walkable cities to car-oriented cities

#dottmo Jane Jacobs vs Robert Moses

#dottmo as walkability becomes the most desired, poor are pushed out of city centers into suburbs

#dottmo (car-centic design) producing a pattern of living that is not sustainable

#dottmo massive financial drag on economy related to congestion, long car travel times

#dottmo website: dead malls (symptom of car-oriented design failing)

#dottmo "the best way to solve mobility is through land use"

#dottmo need mixed use buildings

#dottmo Bank Street Ottawa transformation

#dottmo how to handle new immigrants - they are now ending up in suburbs - disconnected, difficult to get around

#dottmo (me: in part this is about the Arrival City idea)

#dottmo showing transformation of NYC Times Square

#dottmo Madrid has buried city-centre highways

#dottmo new ways to get around - bike share, car share, phone as access/payment for all forms of transportation

#dottmo showing a Complete Streets design

#dottmo if kids can bike to school, that's a good indicator

#dottmo urban design to percentage of pedestrians using the space - temporary or permanent pedestrianization of roadways

#dottmo Hammarby Sjostad http://t.co/vRFX82t5

#dottmo the next big challenge: retrofitting suburbia

#dottmo #ottcity is there a link for the Bank Street redesign Ken is talking about?

#dottmo restructuring around subway stops coming to York U

#dottmo Mississauga "looks like a city... But on the ground it's auto-oriented"

#dottmo "at the heart of a sustainable future is gracefully making this transition" to a pedestrian/cyclist/transit city

#dottmo civil society needs to support these changes

#dottmo iterate solutions with teams of experts to solve complex urban design problems

#dottmo big turnout, mailing list I can sign up for, but not at all clear how people can participate, not just receive broadcasts #ottcity

#dottmo I guess Ken Greenberg was talking about: Bank Street Community Design Plan http://t.co/u38bi6xL 1st I've heard of it. #ottcity

#dottmo Here's the Disney Magic Highway video that Ken showed, demonstrating how crazy people were over cars in 1958 http://t.co/ZMSDVvWj

Contact

There is a general contact address: downtownmoves@ottawa.ca
and the specific project manager is Nelson Edwards: nelson.edwards@ottawa.ca

There was a mailing list you could sign up for at the event; you can probably get on it by emailing them.

Nelson said on the afternoon of the 3rd there was a 40-person discussion / working group, but I don't know who the members were or how the results will be presented.

Also Greenberg's presentation was recorded in some form - I think video - there was mention of a "podcast" of it being posted.

Previously:
November 1, 2011 questions about downtown mobility [now with answers]

Ottawa - Centretown walkability

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:35:00 +0000

As you walk around town between now and November 8th, consider the following topics and if possible please bring a list of 5 examples in each category.

1.     General problems that apply city-wide (e.g. not enough money spent on building, or maintaining pedestrian linkages and routes)

2.     Location-specific chronic problems in any part of the city (e.g. the light at the end of my street takes a long time to change after I press the crosswalk button)

3.     Degradations—where conditions have recently gotten worse (e.g. new vehicular-priority advance turn signals, barricades to convenient street crossings, or the pathway gate at Preston and Albert that was recently locked)

Here are a couple:
* The Bank Street advertising monoliths that block half of the sidewalk
* The traffic signal control nodes (big boxes, usually sitting on a metal column) that block half of the sidewalk

cat missing near Dundonald Park

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:31:00 +0000

Shreddy. Above is from a few months ago; she looks a bit older now. She doesn't have a collar on at the moment but she is chipped.
As you can see, grey with white stripes and white paws.
~~Missing since Tuesday November 1, 2011 near Dundonald Park in Centretown (Ottawa). Much missed.~~

UPDATE 2011-11-02: Found late in the evening, she was stuck on the wrong side of (very busy arterial) Lyon.

questions about downtown mobility

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:09:00 +0000

This is what I asked on the Centretown Design Plan blog:

Will you be representing the Centretown Design Plan at the Downtown Moves (Mobility Overlay) events? http://ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/mobility_overlay/program_en.html

At Diane Holmes' Sidewalk Summit? http://dianeholmes.ca/detail.php?news_id=333

Is there a newer version of the Mobility Position Paper? http://midcentretown.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/mid-centretown-mobility-paper-draft.pdf

What specific information has been/will be passed to the Downtown Moves (Mobility Overlay) study? Is there more relevant material than the Mobility Position Paper (e.g. a chapter of the design plan)?

What is the impact of the fact that the Study Area for Downtown Moves http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/mobility_overlay/study_area_en.html only covers the CBD, and not all of Centretown?

Where is the mechanism to move ideas like fixing the arterials (by making them 2 way, and eventually by reducing the number of lanes or adding bike lanes)?

UPDATE 2011-11-03: I got a response (Ross at the Mid-Centretown Tomorrow blog has always been great with fast, detailed responses).

Hi Richard – No, Urban Strategies is not involved in the Mobility Overlay, although Delcan (who were our transportation consultants) are the folks who are actually leading the Mobility Overlay Study. Teh good news there is that they will be able to transfer all their work over from the CDP to the DOMO study, so they will be well versed in local Centretown issues. Related to that, there is an updated Mobility Position paper that will be published with the final CDP – some further work on parking, TDM, two way conversions and the implications of removing metcalfe street from the Museum of Nature lawns.

With regard to your questions around the Mobility Overlay, your best bet for answers and understanding how transportation networks might be improved and/or impact on adjacent communities is to contact Nelson Edwards at the City of Ottawa (nelson.edwards@ottawa.ca). Nelson is the project manager and will have the most recent information on the scope and methods of the study. It was our understanding that DOMO was to look at the two way conversions as part of its scope. I hope that this is still the case. As you know, Centretown has been included as the Area of Influence….but I am not really sure what this means with regard to work being undertaken locally.

All the best
Ross

Previously:
October 31, 2011 Downtown Moves - Public Lecture Program - Nov 2 & 3, 2011
October 31, 2011 Ottawa Sidewalk (pedestrian) Summit Nov 8, 2011

meta: invoking ancient magic

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:45:00 +0000

Updated my very very old Blogger template to show post titles on individual post pages.

On the miniscule chance you should need to do this, it's a combination of itempage, blogger, and the page title:

[title][$BlogTitle$][itempage]: [Blogger][$BlogItemTitle$][/Blogger][/itempage][/title]

(I've changed angled brackets to square, as the Blogger editor is now too clueless to let me easily quote HTML code.)

Downtown Moves - Public Lecture Program - Nov 2 & 3, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:33:00 +0000

See below for info on Public Lectures.

Context

Ottawa is doing a study on mobility downtown.
Well, that's what I thought they were doing, actually as framed by the study area and terms, it's "what can we tweak in the Central Business District when LRT replaces the Albert & Slater bus transitway" and not "how can we improve pedestrian and cyclist mobility in all of Centretown".

The primary Study Area is the Central Business District of the Central Area (north of Gloucester Street, between Bronson and the Rideau Canal), and along the major arterial streets that will be influenced by the significant changes as a result of the new LRT stations.

from Downtown Moves: Study Area and Study Context

(This study was previously called the Downtown Mobility Overlay, but appears to have been rebranded as Downtown Moves: Transforming Ottawa’s Streets.)

The Centretown Design Plan people had assured us that mobility-related recommendations, like restoring major arterials as two-way streets, would be incorporated into the Downtown Mobility Overlay, but I don't see how this will work in practice as the Study Area is just the CBD and is mostly about adapting to the LRT.

Public Lecture Series

November 2, 2011 - 7pm - Gil Penalosa
register using web form, deadline OCTOBER 31, 2011

November 3, 2011 - 9am - Andrew Wiley-Schwartz, New York City, Department of Transportation
register by emailing downtownmoves@ottawa.ca , deadline OCTOBER 31, 2011

November 3, 2011 -7pm - Ken Greenberg
register using web form, deadline OCTOBER 31, 2011

from Downtown Moves > Public Lecture Program

UPDATE 2011-11-01: The Media Advisory for the public lecture program is out, unfortunately a day after the registration deadline. It says

The summit brings together national and international experts, community leaders, municipal staff and stakeholder agencies to listen and share their experiences as the City seeks to identify ways to create vibrant, safe and accessible streets for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders in downtown Ottawa.

ENDUPDATE

See also: Ottawa Sidewalk (pedestrian) Summit Nov 8, 2011

Previously:
May 30, 2011 Centretown planning links

Ottawa Sidewalk (pedestrian) Summit Nov 8, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Diane Holmes' "SIDEWALK SUMMIT"
Tuesday, November 8, 2011, 7-9 pm
Ottawa City Hall, Colonel By Room (second floor near Lisgar St. entrance)
110 Laurier Avenue West

Dear fellow pedestrians,
The City of Ottawa spends tens of millions of dollars a year on road building, but very little on dedicated pedestrian-specific projects. As announced earlier, I am hosting a meeting on pedestrian safety that will bring together pedestrian advocates, community representatives and residents who want to improve our city's walking environment.

At the meeting we will discuss the disconnect between what is promised in official planning documents (such as the Ottawa Pedestrian Plan) and what is spent in City budgets. We will also break out into groups to share our experiences and concerns about walking in Ottawa, to develop a priority list of pedestrian problems that need to be solved, and plan ways to make that happen.

As you walk around town between now and November 8th, consider the following topics and if possible please bring a list of 5 examples in each category.

1.     General problems that apply city-wide (e.g. not enough money spent on building, or maintaining pedestrian linkages and routes)

2.     Location-specific chronic problems in any part of the city (e.g. the light at the end of my street takes a long time to change after I press the crosswalk button)

3.     Degradations—where conditions have recently gotten worse (e.g. new vehicular-priority advance turn signals, barricades to convenient street crossings, or the pathway gate at Preston and Albert that was recently locked)

Please pass along this invitation to anyone you think would be interested in improving conditions for pedestrians.

Sincerely,

Diane Holmes
Councillor, Somerset Ward

from dianeholmes.ca

You may also want to consider trying to connect this up with the overlapping but apparently disconnected work being done by the Centretown Design Plan, the Downtown Mobility Overlay (apparently now called Downtown Moves: Transforming Ottawa's Streets), Choosing Our Future and NCC Horizon 2067.

See also: Downtown Moves - Public Lecture Program - Nov 2 & 3, 2011

UPDATE 2011-11-01: Also of note is the Ottawa Pedestrian Plan, marked draft 2009. ENDUPDATE

Previously:
May 30, 2011 Centretown planning links

meta 2: template annihilation

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:48:00 +0000

In saving a two-line change to my ancient blog template, Google appears to have annihilated it and replaced it with a Google-approved generic button-filled Google-service-plastered generic template.

~~If this is really the case, I am angry.~~

UPDATE: I was able to restore my old template, I had to do Update Template and then Revert to Classic Template.

meta: cleanup

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:40:00 +0000

I guess I can remove the MyYahoo and Bloglines links from my sidebar, what with both of them basically no longer existing. Hard when your blog outlives the services it used to use. (And kudos to jsoft.ca whose commenting service for my blog has continued to run, year after year.)

Also renewing my radio station, in case anyone wants to listen (it's all recorded music, it's not live radio).

11-09-2001 plus ten

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:29:00 +0000

1) It was 11-09-2001 or 2001-09-11 Don't get trapped by this "9/11" usage that unanchors it from time, placing it in the perpetual present.

That's ten years ago.

2) This is the last time I write about it.

3) World War II only lasted six years, from 1939 to 1945.

4) As my blog pre-dates the event, I have a blog posting from that day, and a follow-up two days later. I stand by them.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 - OH MY GOD

Thursday, September 13, 2001 - I'm thinking through the recent events.

MEC cleaner for rubber (Hunter) boots

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:45:00 +0000

Hunter boots can get white discolouration, it's normal, it's called "blooming".

http://blog.gumdropsonline.com/2010/09/10/bloomin-hunters/

You can get a good spray to clean them up from MEC, look for UV Tech, e.g.

MEC - McNett UV Tech 16 oz

I recommend cleaning up the boots outside and planning to wash up afterwards as
* the spray goes all over the place
* the spray is super-slippery

Centretown planning links

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Tue, 31 May 2011 03:32:00 +0000

Trying to untangle the layers of Centretown planning requires obsessive trail-following and link-collecting. Here's what I've found.

Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan

See Centretown Design Plan - feedback by June 13 for info on the draft report.

The Escarpment Area District Plan

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/planning/community_plans/completed/escarpment/index_en.html

Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay (DOMO)

The Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay ("DOMO") will be much more important in
determining the street-level life - the community design plan can feed
recommendations into it but it will be DOMO that sets the final transportation
plan. The community design plan is recommending fixing the high-speed downtown
arterials (Metcalfe, O'Connor, Kent, Lyon) by making them two-way and other
traffic calming - this would be awesome but will be a big fight.

http://ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/mobility_overlay/index_en.html

(ignore the 2010 part on the above page, the study starts fall 2011)

Ottawa East-West Light Rail

Understand the LRT as a commuter rail system (like the RER in Paris), not as a
subway or a tram system. It will benefit commuters but will have very little
impact on the downtown transit experience (in some ways Transitway access will
be worse, as it is six escalators down from the surface to get to e.g. the
Rideau platform).

This is the latest info on the LRT plan

"City of Ottawa Light Rail Transit System - May 2011"
http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/ptac/2011/05-19/OLRT%20May%20Ped%20Cycl%20&%20Transit%20advis%20cttee.pdf

Cycle Friendly Ottawa

The "Cycle Friendly City" motion says "Ottawa implements policies that favour
walking, cycling and public transit over the use of private motor vehicles".

City of Ottawa policy on walking

Pedestrian consultation

Diane Holmes is doing some sort of event in June about making Centretown more pedestrian-friendly but there's nothing up on her website yet

Here's the article she wrote
Centretown Buzz - Planning to put pedestrians first
and here's her office contact info
http://www.dianeholmes.ca/detail.php?id_holmes=29

UPDATE 2011-11-01: There is an Ottawa Pedestrian Plan, marked draft 2009.
Also Diane Holmes' event will be November 8, 2011. ENDUPDATE

Ottawa Cycling Plan

There's a fully-approved Ottawa Cycling plan, most of which hasn't been
implemented.

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/onthemove/cycling/ottawa_cycling_plan_en.html

Laurier Segregated Bike Lane

The Laurier dedicated cycling lane is at least proceeding with a two-year
trial

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/bikelane/index_en.html

How do you find out about planning?

I don't know how a Centretown citizen would be expected to pull all this
info together.

Whatever the NCC is doing

The NCC is also doing a bunch of other stuff but trying to untangle it would
make my head explode.
There's this Choosing Our Future thing that is some kind of input into some
Horizon 2067 thing and some cycling thing and aieeeeeeeeeeeee

http://www.choosingourfuture.ca/index_en.html

Horizon 2067
http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/ncc_web_content_page.asp?cid=16300-20443-136853&lang=1&bhcp=1

Centretown Design Plan - feedback by June 13

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Mon, 30 May 2011 21:06:00 +0000

The Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan has been renamed "Ottawa Centretown: A Community Design Plan for the Heart of Centretown", it's a 51MB PDF.

Draft Centretown Design Plan (May 27, 2011)

from the Mid-Centretown Tomorrow blog: The Draft Community Design Plan is Available!

You can leave feedback as a comment to the blog post by June 13, 2011.

Note: If you're viewing it on an iPad (or an iPhone) many of the images do not render, showing either as blank pages or as diagrams with labels but no content.

There will be a final Open House on Wednesday June 29th at the Museum of Nature.

There's a lot of good stuff in here, and I will have more to say later, but if you want to jump right to the proposed zoning changes, they're on page 107 (page 111 of the PDF).

A residential tower zone (which they call "residential apartment neighbourhood") of up to 27 storeys (83m) is proposed from Gloucester down to between Cooper and Somerset. I think this is fine and reflects certain realities on the ground. A further high-rise district is proposed near Catherine (up to 77m in height).

Between Catherine and Somerset either existing zoning is retained or new clear 7 to 9 storey zoning is proposed.

The only part I disagree with is their "Traditional Mainstreet" type e (27 storeys) on Bank and Kent north of the midline between Cooper and Somerset. While this is their residential apartment zone dividing line, I don't think 27 storeys is appropriate along a mainstreet segment even as it heads into the CBD, and it doesn't align with their recommendation of having height mainly on east-west mid-blocks.

Copenhagenize in Ottawa June 3, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:12:00 +0000

Mikael "Copenhagenize" Colville-Andersen will speak about urban cycling at noon on June 3, 2011 in Ottawa.

...an entertaining look at Bicycle Culture 2.0.

Mikael is an urban mobility expert and "bicycle anthropologist" - with plenty of first-hand experience from Denmark.

He is on a tour of 18 countries talking about how to reclaim the bicycle for what it once was - a smart, respectable and liberating way for sensible people to get around - no special gear or bravado required. Cycling Vision is delighted to bring Mikael's engaging presentation to Ottawa.

When:
Friday, June 3, Noon

Where:
Cartier Place Hotel, 180 Cooper St (east of Elgin)

Cost:
Free. Munchies provided.

Parking:
Indoor bike parking is limited. Register at front desk.

from http://www.cycling-vision.ca/events/

You can also see Mr. Colville-Andersen cycling around Copenhagen with David Suzuki.

His blog is http://www.copenhagenize.com/ and he tweets @copenhagenize

meta: 10 years

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:10:00 +0000

10 years since my first blog post.

HP e9180f stable

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 22:35:00 +0000

For those of you with an HP e9180f (i7-920) who haven't been able to keep it from randomly crashing, I can report... tentatively, that the latest software out seems to render it stable. (I'm running Windows 7.)

Possibly due to an update to Norton Internet Security, or maybe optional Windows patch KB2488113, or some other recent Windows software changes.

I did apply SP1 but it appeared to have stabilized before that.

I could barely keep it from crashing long enough to get an update applied before.
Since patching I've been running for 3 hours without problems.

Fingers crossed.

Probably most other people have given up on this machine years ago though.

Ottawa Sun article on Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:15:00 +0000

Downtown facelift planned - Ottawa Sun - Friday April 7, 2011

“The downtown is sterile, dark, dank, not nearly enough room on the sidewalks for people who use the buses,” Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes said. “It’s really an unsatisfactory situation.”

Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury takes a glass-half-full view.

“It’s improving. We’re seeing little signs of more life,” Fleury said. “People are putting a lot energy around the LRT, but there’s a broader view here. People want to come back to the downtown.”

Previously:
2011-04-01 Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay

Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:16:00 +0000

The Statement of Work for the Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay will be presented at Transportation Committee on April 6, 2011.

The background text says

The focus of the integrated study will be the streetscape environment for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders following completion of the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel (DOTT).

This will be a very important study for the future of a walkable downtown Ottawa.

In Broader Issues to be Addressed they state

The City has the opportunity to rebalance its priorities and to improve its streets. The current design of Ottawa’s downtown streets reflects past pressures and priorities of addressing vehicle traffic. Allocation of space has not only been based on the proportionate size of the various users of the street, but also on our own rather dated biases. The bias of the 20th century was towards expansive suburban growth, car-oriented travel and efficient vehicle movement into, and out of, the downtown. This has resulted in the greatest amount of space on the street being allocated to cars, trucks and buses, while the more vulnerable users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, have limited space on the periphery of the street. As a result, the quality, safety and attractiveness of our major streets – as experienced by pedestrians, cyclists and the adjacent communities – have been compromised.

I also found the following paragraph interesting, considering they have loaded up the Bank Street sidewalks with all this junk, even post-redesign (the giant ugly ad monster tower things are the worst offenders, but there's lots of other stuff in everyone's way too).

Generally narrow sidewalks are further encumbered by signs, lamp poles, newspaper boxes, traffic signal poles, trees, sandwich boards, benches, planters, parking display machines, waste receptacles, etc.

Key Mobility Overlay Milestones

Prepare a study outline and seek staff endorsement - Fall 2010
Scope of Work to Transportation Committee for approval - April 2011
Award of contract for consulting contract - June 2011
Initiate study and launch consultation strategy; organize PCG, BCG and ACG - September 2011
Mobility Overlay consultation in co-ordination with refinement of LRT station design - September 2011
Prepare recommended strategy - January 2012
Consult on the strategy - February 2012
Refine strategy - March 2012
Propose strategy and final consultation - September 2012
Committee and Council approval of the strategy - December 2012

City of Ottawa policy on walking

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:58:00 +0000

It is ridiculously difficult to follow a trail of decision-making on the ottawa.ca site - in fact there is no trail, as nothing is hyperlinked, so you have to navigate full-text document after full-text document, figuring out the connections yourself.

In any case, my trail ended up a City Council September 8, 2010

8. taking steps towards a cycle friendly city - MOTION
MESURES POUR RENDRE LA VILLE PLUS CONVIVIALE POUR LES CYCLISTES - MOTION

Committee Recommendations AS AMENDED

1. That Council approve the following recommendations from the attached report:

a. That best practices be deployed for marking, signage and signalization to ensure safety and to accommodate cyclists at intersections with segregated lanes.

b. That Ottawa’s Official Plan be implemented so as to reflect and respect the following guiding principle and accompanying objective, to wit – “A Green and Environmentally-Sensitive City - A Focus on Walking, Cycling and Transit - Ottawa implements policies that favour walking, cycling and public transit over the use of private motor vehicles, thereby facilitating the use of modes of transportation that are socially accessible, environmentally healthy and economically feasible.”

c. That Ottawa’s Official Plan be amended to require that the design of new sub-divisions incorporate cycle-friendly ‘short-cuts’ as part of the residential street and path network.

d. That the design of all new rapid transit stations consider the best means of accommodating the needs of cyclists who will be using the rapid transit system for a portion of their journey.

e. That, in addition to the cycling integration with road re-construction programs, an additional $5M be allocated each year, subject to budget approval, to stand-alone cycling projects to complete the missing links in the network.

f. That Finance re-categorize the Cycling Facilities Programme from Strategic Initiatives to Growth.

2. That Council refer the following recommendations from the attached report to the appropriate policy planning work, including the Official Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, the Cycling Plan, the Downtown Mobility Overlay study, and the East-West Segregated Bike Lane Pilot Project:

a. That the City of Ottawa undertake the establishment of a network of segregated lanes for cyclists crossing the downtown core in both East-West and North-South directions, even where such facilities require changes to existing parking or travel lanes.

b. That the “Copenhagen model” for segregated lanes, wherein parked cars protect the cycling lanes from regular traffic rather than have the cycling lanes protect the parked vehicles, be adopted as the standard in Ottawa on streets where cars, parked cars, segregated lanes as well as sidewalks are proposed.

c. That new roads and re-construction projects with urban cross-sections include segregated cycling facilities and budget for them accordingly.

d. That the City’s Transportation Master Plan and the Ottawa Cycling Plan be amended to reflect a revised 8% modal share target for cycling within the Greenbelt, and 5% for the city as a whole, to be achieved by 2021 (currently the target is set at 3% city-wide to be achieved by 2031).

And that staff report back with an update in Q1 2011, including plans to address concerns raised by the BIAs with respect to business impacts and potential loss of parking.

CARRIED

from http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/occ/2010/09-08/englishminutes96.htm

This follows on from a motion carried at Transportation Committee on September 1, 2010: http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/trc/2010/09-01/disposition44eng.htm

@centretowner tells me this should not be interpreted as a priority list e.g. it's not

1. walking
2. cycling
3. public transit
4. private car

it's

1. walking, cycling, public transit
2. private vehicle

The Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan consultation has a bunch of ideas about how to implement these stated priorities in downtown Ottawa, see their presentation (PowerPoint, 11MB) starting at slide 28 (from November 30, 2010). Also see their draft mobility position paper (PDF).

Apparently the city is going to do a Downtown Mobility Overlay study, but there doesn't seem to be any info online yet.

Jan Gehl presentation about urban planning in Ottawa - October 6, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:55:00 +0000

I am glad that NCC (finally) posted video of Gehl's talk online - it's great.

Here it is at giant NCC URL. You can also get the slides from his presentation (although you would never know this from navigating the cycling site).

Note: There's no way to make the video full-screen; I think the NCC should use a different player and put the content on YouTube or some other video site as well.

The NCC has also improved its Cycling in Canada’s Capital Region page with better links to the work it is doing, although they STILL don't link to the PDFs of cycling-presentations (including Gehl's) that they host on their own site.

Previously:

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 NCC cycling presentations - including PDF of Gehl's presentation

Saturday, October 09, 2010 Jan Gehl in Ottawa - my livetweets from the event

Mid-Centretown Design Plan - come out Nov 30, 2010 to discuss

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:46:00 +0000

The Mid-Centretown Community Design Plan
Community Open House

Tuesday November 30, 2010
Iona Hall, Knox Presbyterian Church
120 Lisgar Street
Open House: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. • Presentation: 6:30 p.m.

http://midcentretown.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/join-us-on-november-30th/

This is important for anyone who is concerned about improving downtown Ottawa.

Incidentally, the consultants have been doing a great job with their blog - I recommend you check out their posts, and provide them with comments/feedback.

attempting to go to Urban Capital event about Architecture

noreply@blogger.com (rakerman) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:55:00 +0000

Urban Capital is doing a 5-night series of events called Trends in Design.
They're a developer and in Ottawa the event is in their (small) sales centre for the "Central" condominium complex. I have a lot of respect for the fact Urban Capital has built Mondrian at the north end of Bank and is now building Central - they are really going to lift up the street and the entire area. That being said, they clearly have a strong self-interest in getting a bunch of people who are interested in urbanism and architecture into their sales centre.

I also have to say, for a series of events about design, the event info and signup is an example of a truly awful Flash user interface.

* You can't link to the event or individual nights directly
* The event pages don't list what night
* You can only see the event one night at a time (one night per screen)
* The signup page only lists events by night, not by description
* For sold out events the date simply disappears

So the workflow to sign up is:
* Go to Urban Capital
* Click on Trends in Design
* Click on 5 Nights
* Click on Next to get to Night 2
* Click on Next to get to Night 3
* Click on Next to get to Night 4
* Decide date looks ok, but there's no time listed?
* Click on Back
* Click on When and Where
* Click on Ottawa
* See it is "6:30pm cocktails, 7:30 event" (I would copy & paste this from the site, but it's Flash, so I have to type it in manually)
* Click on Tickets
* Click on Buy Tickets
* Try to remember what night it was you wanted to go to, since it only lists nights, no other information
* (Probably click back around through the nights in order to remember which one)
* Click on e.g. Night 3
* Enter a bunch of info Urban Capital doesn't need to know
* Click on $20 or $80 or whatever
* Click on Pay Now
* Go to PayPal and login or re-enter your name etc. for credit card

* Receive automatic email confirmation from PayPal (with no info about the event)
* Do not receive (at least so far) any automatic confirmation about the event itself, say listing the date & time as a reminder

I think it may be the worst event info / ticketing UI I've ever seen.

In any case, the events were/will be

NIGHT 1 | SEP 16 2010
Fashion Trends by Lara Ceroni, editor at ElleCanada.com

NIGHT 2 | OCT 28 2010
New Thinking in Designing Cities by George Dark, Partner at Urban Strategies Head

NIGHT 3 | NOV 25 2010
Where Industrial Design is Taking Us by Julian Goss, Program Chair of Industrial Design Department at the Ontario College of Art & Design

NIGHT 4 | JAN 27 2011
Architecture in Our New Century by Robert Claiborne, Design Lead at Cannon Design Lead Architect

NIGHT 5 | FEB 24 2011
Interior Design Thinks Small by Cecconi Simone, Partner at Cecconi Simone Interiors

(from Modern Ottawa - Trends in design coming to Ottawa)

The remaining ones are all
6:30pm cocktails, 7:30 event
at the Central sales centre
453 McLeod Street (at Bank)

Modern Ottawa also did a brief review of the New Thinking in Designing Cities presentation - Trends in Design : Night 2.