Lyon Street, Part I: The Asphalt Rapids

When travelling in Centretown between home and work, I often must take Lyon street. This one does with all the pleasure of riding a bicycle down a flight of stairs.

For whatever reason, Lyon Street keeps developing terrible potholes, and the myriad patch jobs applied never really solve the problem.

It was no help last year when the construction of a condo building in the business district (pictured below) involved the intersection of Lyon and Laurier getting dug up with many holes, each patched separately--and poorly--leaving a crumbling quilt on which to quiver. The developer should not have been allowed to get away with leaving our roads in such a deplorable mess.


But my daily beef relates to the stretch between Somerset and Gladstone.

It's like a cancer on the road. Every week there are big new potholes, and every week the City puts some filler in them--adding bumps to nature's holes.



The turn from James is perhaps the worst. Each time I make the turn, I gingerly negotiate the potholes in order to mitigate the effects of the impromptu shiatsu beating that awaits my hindquarters.

Riding on the right side of the street is impossible, but so is riding just about anywhere else for any distance. They seem to have done a reasonable job just South of Gladstone, covering two-thirds of a stretch of potholes with a pair of medium-size squares--but that is hardly enough.



I raised this issue with Councillor Holmes a couple of weeks back. I told her that Lyon desperately needs to be repaved. She did not immediately embrace the idea, as she doesn't want to lose the speed humps which slow traffic as it careens toward the freeway onramp.

But there is hope...

Tune in tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday, July 29 for the exciting sequel: Lyon Street, Part II: A Golden Triangle of Hope!