Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 2: West of Preston

This is the second in a 15-part series on the 2011 reconstruction of Somerset Street West. The previous entry included an overview and part 1 of the series.

In this part, we'll look at the section of Somerset Street west of Preston Street, before the hill up to the bridge over the O-Train tracks.

In this early rendering, superimposed over an aerial view of the existing intersectionyou can see that the design has been modified to bring Somerset down to two lanes, with a short left turn lane at the intersection of Preston. By removing a lane, pedestrians have more space to wait at the corners, and are exposed to less traffic thanks to a shorter crossing distance between the curbs. Preston Street was also reduced from four lanes to three in its reconstruction in the last two years, though the aerial view predates it.

Here's the view on the ground, looking west in June 2010. The intersection is paved with nice smooth asphalt from the recent reconstruction of Preston Street that ran through it. May's Chinese restaurant is at the northwest corner, on the right. Despite that, this section isn't in Chinatown but instead is part of the Preston Street (Little Italy) Business Improvement Area (BIA), whose offices are above the Chinese restaurant. In the design process, a "Marco Polo"/"East meets West" feature was considered for this intersection of the two BIAs, but this idea never took hold.

Peds on Weds: Ice away!

Even when no snow has fallen in a while, the City's road crews are still hard at work. This is something I've noticed a lot of this year that I don't recall seeing in previous years. The sidewalk plows are out in full force to clear built up snow and ice from the sidewalks and lay down salt on icy parts of sidewalks, especially at the corners. Not just the main streets, but side streets like Florence Street here have gotten this treatment—important when half of Centretown residents walk to work.

This is good news for pedestrians. There are plenty of things for pedestrians to complain about, but it's equally important to point out when good things happen to pedestrians. Please send me your ideas for positive pedestrian stories to include in my weekly Peds on Weds posts!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 1: Introduction/Overview

Last year, Somerset Street West was dug up between Booth Street and the far side of the bridge over the O-Train tracks (Just as Bronson will be this year north of the Queensway. There's an open house tonight at McNabb Community Centre at 6:30pm to talk about the construction phasing for Bronson). This is the first in a 15-post series detailing the reconstruction, from someone who was involved in the reconstruction from the very first committee meeting of a long, involved process. Shown here is one of the public open houses at the Plant Bath:

After sorting through hundreds of my photos from this construction project, I'm proud to present this saga in rich detail. I'll be posting one or two entries per week. Here's the roadmap:

Show/hide list of posts in this series

• Part 1 (below): Introduction and overview
• Part 2: West of Preston
• Part 3: Wider sidewalks with unit pavers
• Part 4: Under Chinatown (Booth to Preston)
• Part 5: Aside — Rochester/Spruce sidewalk
• Part 6: Poles & signals
• Part 7: Trees & bike racks
• Part 8: Bridge sidewalks A
• Part 9: Bridge sidewalks B
• Part 10: City Centre
• Part 11: O-Train pathway — planning
• Part 12: O-Train pathway — tunnel construction
• Part 13: O-Train pathway — cantilevered boardwalk
• Part 14: Bridge railings
• Part 15: Finale - decorations and art

There were many other great photos and topics that didn't fit into the series that I intend to draw from subsequently. I did a similar series on the Bank Street reconstruction in 2009, though I wasn't involved in the planning part of that project. Other multi-part series can be found under the label Tours.

Now let's get this series started!

Part 1: Overview

Officially, this total reconstruction of Somerset Street consisted of phases 3 and 4 of the Wellington Street West reconstruction, which involved the reconstruction of Hintonburg's main street in the previous few years. Since Chinatown east of Booth was done a decade or so ago, these were the final sections in the reconstruction of the century-old water mains and sewers along Somerset and Wellington all the way from Elgin to Westboro.

Burgers on Main (on Somerset)

Last night I had dinner at Burgers on Main, a new restaurant at 343 Somerset Street West, just east of Bank Street in the Somerset Village BIA. The name derives from the original location in Manotick, in that village's Main Street. If you crossed a diner with a fine restaurant, you'd get Burgers on Main, which has the best of both. But first, a brief recent history of the location...

The building was briefly occupied by Friday's Roast Beef House following that restaurant's departure from Grant House on Elgin Street. I included this photo on the blog post about Grant House in late 2010:

According to Google Street View, it was previously a mediterranean restaurant called "Bocado". Street View took its photos in mid-Spring 2009, but I don't know how long Bocado was there.

I'm by no means a professional food critic, but I thought it worthwhile to share my impressions.

Peds on Weds: Rideau Spiral

I almost never use the east entrance to the Rideau Centre, but even if I did, I probably wouldn't have noticed the neat spiral pattern of the pavers. It's a great looking space on its own, but it's surrounded on three sides by cars, cars, cars!

A report released yesterday that will be going to the City's Finance and Economic Development Committee next week indicates that a primary entrance to the underground Rideau Street light rail station will be built into an expansion of the Rideau Centre on the adjacent parking lot along Rideau between the mall and the former Ogilvy's department store. The lot in question is to the left of the scene in the photo above.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Tools of the dig

Over at 90 Elgin's construction site, they've dug as far as the footings of the former Lorne Building, and are using that as a ledge while they continue digging within the boundaries of the new building's basement. A twisted I-beam and some tools are resting on the ledge. You can watch the construction on this site. Click on the still image to see a live video feed from the site.


(The following text is repeated from the September 2011 post, Centretown Flyover)

I wrote a post on the context and history of the Lorne Building in October 2009.

There are also three articles on the Lorne Building at URBSite:

• Renderings of the proposed building
• History of the development of the Lorne building (the one being demolished, and its predecessors)
• The Lorne building's opening, early photos of it after opening, and related architecture

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Snow Removal on Kent

One night back in January, I happened upon a snow removal crew on Kent Street. I had a few minutes to spare, so I stuck around to watch and take photos. It's quite a feat of choreography, which happens several times each winter on Centretown's main roads, and at least once or twice per winter on our narrow side streets, too. With a decent snowstorm forecast, today seems like a good time to post these photos.

A day or so prior to the snow removal, temporary signs are stuck into the snowbanks prohibiting parking between 7pm and 7am (or 7am and 7pm). Right before the crews come by, a truck will collect most of these signs for re-use.

The process documented here, which spans about 20 minutes, starts with a loader, which moves much the snow away from the larger surfaces along the curb. All of this happens while traffic continues to flow, although since it's generally done in the middle of the night, the traffic is light.

A smaller plow goes around after the loader to get snow out of the smaller corners on the sidewalks. In the foreground, a coating of ice on the hydro pole cast a neat reflection of the light.

Peds on Weds: Tight squeezes on Bank Street

Street design is a finnicky thing. The City's standard clearance is 1.8 metres, and the bare minimum for new sidewalks is 1.5m. That's still pretty tight, this guy took about a minute to gingerly squeeze through this narrow channel:

Even with 1.5m though, sometimes they can't make it through. I measured exactly 150cm exactly between the tip of the 'nose' of hydrant and edge of bike rack (hope nobody parks their bike there when the plow needs to get by!)...

...but the clearance isn't straight! The slalom of three minimum-width clearances doesn't leave enough room for larger sidewalk plows to go through.

Eventually, one of the smaller, more nimble plows without the salt spreader on the back to go through a few days later.

This kind of detail can be easily overlooked in the consultations on street design, especially when many of the consultations happen throughout the Summer. Very often there are also last-minute changes to put in an extra utility box in what ends up to be a very inconvenient location.

The 1.8m rule applies not only to sidewalks, but also to bike facilities, like the bike cutout at Bank and McLeod.