Bad sectors in Centretown

Back in July, my hard disk drive crashed, losing two months' worth of photos (about 1600). At the end of October I got a surprise call from the guy I'd brought it to, who said he was able to recover over 90% of the data. I was able to push this to about 97% of the photos that I had taken since my previous backup.

Some of them, however, were damaged. The hard drive had bad sectors and in the recovery many of the photos were damaged (only a very small number were completely unreadable). The damage inflicted on them actually has a bit of an artistic tone to them. Here's a photo of 222 Queen Street (which is where the RMOC headquarters were before it moved to the building that's now City Hall):

I discovered that I actually had a more recent backup on an external drive, up to mid-June. From this, I was able to push the recovery rate to about 99% of my photos, since many of the damaged photos were taken before then. Here's the original of the photo above:

Yellow dots are like loopy buttons for cyclists

(It's been a month since my last post; I'm slowly recovering from a long stint volunteering at RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest where I run the bike parking. This year we had record numbers again!)

A topic I'm eager to write about is the yellow dots on the pavement at intersections. You may recall my epic on pedestrian buttons, No Ifs, Ands or Buttons (and the follow-up supplementary post). Well cyclists have a way of activating the signals too, and what better place to describe it than the brand-new traffic control signal at Bronson and Arlington:

To recap the lowdown on ped buttons: when there is a traffic control signal with buttons, and there is a little yellow sign above the button, that means you must press the button if you want the walk signal to activate (though for some such intersections there might be some times of the day or week when the signal changes on a fixed timing whether or not the button is pressed).

Bronson and Somerset still closed

Construction on Bronson Avenue resumed a while ago, with the Somerset and Bronson intersection closed from the beginning of April to the end of May. Other work has also been going on, such as the finishing touches of the segment south of Somerset, in particular the sidewalks and landscaping between MacLaren and Gladstone (which Eric Darwin has recently blogged about). The impact on Chinatown can be expressed in this single photo:

This next picture gives a bit of an idea of why the intersection has to be closed for so long. There's a mess of stuff underneath that needs to be replaced. It's a three-dimensional soup of cables, wires, pipes, drains, and sewers (much of the latter were installed late last year and over the winter).

Taking care of Bronson business

Construction continues on the Bronson Avenue reconstruction project, and it has been complicated by the large amount of underground services crammed into a relatively narrow road allowance (the street itself is wide, but unlike most streets Bronson takes up nearly the entire right-of-way). Utilities are stacked on top of each other, and the different crews have to wait until the work on the utility above theirs is done before they can move in.

The road closure is also being felt by the local businesses. Although the construction crews are making a point of frequenting the local restaurants on their lunches, it doesn't make up for the potential customers that have avoided Brsonson for the closure. At 422 Bronson Avenue is Centretown Resto Bar, on the west side of Bronson, at Florence. Their specialty is Halifax donair. I went in there for the first time a couple weeks ago, and discovered they have excellent egg rolls, too!

The auto-oriented businesses are particularly hard hit. Going from 20,000 vehicles a day passing in front of their store to a few dozen takes away a lot of potential customers. Speedy Auto Body at 540 Bronson, shown here, and Midas up the street at 450, both fall into this category.

While some places on Bronson are destination businesses that attract customers specifically to their store, like Auntie Loo's, most offer goods and services that you can get pretty much anywhere. Number 527 Bronson at Arlington, guarded in the photo below by two Colautti Construction excavators, hosts the third location of Papa Joe's Pizzeria, adding to the two locations out in Ottawa's far South end. Hopefully the signalized crossing going in at Bronson and Arlington will bring enough customers to Papa Joe's to keep the store from closing, like so many businesses at that location even before construction.

Unlike many other main streets that have undergone construction in Somerset Ward—most recently Bank, Preston and Somerset—Bronson doesn't have a Business Improvement Association. When those streets went under construction, people called them "war zones". In contrast, Bronson is being described as a "ghost town".

The underlying reason for this is likely that pedestrians have been trained to avoid Bronson whenever possible because of the heavy traffic. Even with the traffic removed, this lesson remains.

We can hope that a similar principle applies to some of the commuting motorists who have been forced temporarily to avoid Bronson or stop driving altogether (in favour of transit, walking and cycling), but we should also hope that the landscaping, wider sidewalks and pedestrian-level decorative ligthing will help to make Bronson a more attractive walking route, and make both the Avenue and the businesses along it healthier.

Fire at Arlington Bed & Breakfast

[Last Wednesday's lengthy pedestrian pushbutton post was followed by a Walk Ottawa meeting in the evening, where all two hours were spent grilling two of the City's traffic operations managers about pedestrian signals, and I think we could use a break. So no Peds on Weds post today.]

On Monday night, the power went out in much of the south-west section of Centretown (roughly 417 to Gladstone, Bank to Bronson), which was the first indication to many that something was amiss. To my recollection, this is only the second time this section of Centretown has lost power in the six years I've lived on Gladstone.

After hearing fire trucks go by and checking the Twitter feeds of Ottawa Fire Services Public Information Officer Marc Messier and Ottawa Citizen reporter Meghan Hurley, I quickly learned that there was a raging fire at 511 Kent Street, the Arlington Avenue "Bed & Breakfast":

A big crowd of neighbours were out watching the flames still shooting from the roof, likely motivated by the power outage and Summer-like weather at sunset. Police closed off Kent Street and Arlington Avenue in the two blocks in either direction on both streets. Here a firefighter is near the top of Ladder 13, which is extended between 511 Kent and the next house up.

Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour and posters

Today's Jane's Walk for the Rescue Bronson Avenue initiative went really well. It was right on time and we had about 35-45 people on each of the two parts of the tour (breaking it up into two parts worked really well, and some people joined us at noon for the second part). See yesterday's post promoting this walk here

Here are the volunteers who led the walk, from left to right: Will and Josée, who helped keep order and time; and moi, who gave the tour. We're standing at what the NCC calls "Bronson Park" at the top of Bronson overlooking Lebreton Flats, and across the street from Roper House on the Christ Church site.

Here's a shot I took near the end of the tour of the attendees on the second part of the tour as we ducked in to Florence Street for a respite from all that heavy traffic along Bronson:

I made eight different location-specific posters to illustrate the walk at the following locations, copied below (click on them to see full-size ~1.5MB ea). I left them up so you should be able to still see some of them and compare with what's there in person until they're inevitably taken down.

Here are all eight. I'm just listing the names of the posters, which don't have current pictures of the sites because they're intended to be seen in situ. I could make this post insanely long with additional photos and text, but I need some sleep after a long and successful day at the Jane's Walk and the wrap party at the Lieutenant's Pump (which was recently renovated).

Too close

Saw this broken glass on Arlington a few weeks ago. It looks like someone's side mirror got smashed.

Regular posts resume next week.

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

379 Arlington

Canes are usually used to hold up elderly people, but this one--in concert with a broom--is being used to hold up a young tree:

That always made me laugh when I walked by, but the cane recently disappeared. It's on Arlington just west of Bronson.

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

Neither snow, nor rain, nor mechanical failure...

We rely on Canada Post trucks to deliver our mail, so who delivers the Canada Post trucks?

Gloucester Towing, evidently. At the corner of Cambridge and Arlington.

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

Lyon Bike Lane: Sharrows on Arlington

As speculated in the post Lyon Street Repaved: Cyclists get their sharrows in September and in Cycling Updates in October, sharrows have been added to Arlington to connect the end of the Lyon Street southbound bike lane to the pathway at Percy.

Someone e-mailed me the day they were applied and I went over to check them out. Here's the view along Lyon Street, with the sharrows on Arlington going West (to the right side of the screen):

Unfortunately, and as I mentioned in a post to Citizens for Safe Cycling's public e-mail discussion list, they're not exactly the most ambitious application of sharrows. For example, you can't even see them from Lyon, which defeats the purpose of having them out there to show cyclists where to go next when the lane ends.

Once you do make it onto Arlington, you see two problems. First, the sharrows are very close to the curb, which is an area always full of debris and which promotes the idea of "cyclists move out of motorists' way, even on quiet side streets". A Google Images search for Sharrows turns up lots of examples of proper sharrow positioning.

Second, there are only three per block, one at each end and one in the middle. Not exactly rolling out the red carpet. It makes you wonder if they'll do a similarly half-hearted implementation of the Segregated Bike Lane on Laurier, causing that pilot project to fail.

Here's what they should have done at Lyon and Arlington: sharrows going around the corner so that cyclists can see well in advance where the cycling route goes.

Once you get along Arlington to Percy Street, there also isn't much indication that you're supposed to turn left here. (Of course, in my cycling route plan for Percy, you'd also be able to continue straight on Arlington).

In Montreal, where I fell in love with Sharrows, they use them properly: to indicate (a) that cyclists have a right to use the road, and (b) where the otherwise invisible cycling route goes when you get to an intersection. When the cycling route takes a turn, the sharrows make it painless to follow the route, as in this Google Street View of Stuart and Saint-Viateur (click the image to go to the location in Google Street View):

As with Ottawa's ever-cautious bureaucracy, a small step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. Let's hope these sharrow show them the way to implementing them more boldly to connect cycling routes.

Check out the public open house on Thursday at City Hall for the Segregated Bike Lane pilot project. The latest proposal is for Laurier Avenue, which actually isn't all that bad.

Visit www.ottawa.ca/bikelane for more details, including the draft drawings of how the street would be configured and Vélo Québec's review of the proposals. The public meeting on Thursday is from 6:30pm to 8:30pm with a presentation at 7pm.

Bronson and Cycling: Quite the opportunity. Really!

I've been up till the wee hours of the morning every night for the last couple of weeks, working on either Rescue Bronson Avenue materials or preparing for last night's CCCA Annual General Meeting (where I was acclaimed as President), or both! My head and body hurt from all this community work, but they're both very important causes.

However, the Bronson Avenue Public Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting is tonight (sorry, the City insists it's by invitation only), and I wanted to assemble these materials on cycling and Bronson in advance of that meeting.

I'll start off, curiously, with this photo of Garland Avenue in Hintonburg.


Garland is a small but important street that branches off the intersection of Wellington Street West and Somerset Street West. During the recent reconstruction of Wellington Street West (or "West Wellie", as Eric Darwin calls it), the project engineers and consultants concluded that there wasn't enough room on West Wellington for a bike lane. Instead of saying "oh well", they decided to improve the parallel cycling connection one block North on Spencer and Armstrong streets. Unfortunately, Garland, which connects Armstrong with Wellington and Somerset, was only one way. Cyclists would have to take a major detour to get from Armstrong back to Somerset. Still undeterred, the project participants decided to add a contra-flow bike lane to Garland to allow a two-way cycling connection along the route (which continues along Somerset West), alleviating this barrier.

Fast forward to Bronson Avenue. At the first PAC meeting for Bronson Avenue's reconstruction, I argued that Percy Street (one block East of Bronson) should be improved as part of the Bronson reconstruction, just as a parallel route had been arranged during the West Wellington reconstruction.

The project consultants scoffed. "Bronson isn't a designated cycling route in the Ottawa Cycling Plan," they said (paraphrased, of course), "and Percy Street isn't Bronson Avenue, so we have no responsibility to provide or improve cycling facilities on either street."

Well, here's a closeup of Centretown in the Ottawa Cycling Plan. Specifically, figure 3-4c on page 72. The brown lines are the "spine", or major, cycling routes on the City's cycling network, and the green lines are the "neighbourhood", or local cycling routes.

A Cambridge Street stitch in time

While most street signs are attached to their posts with metal straps, some of the new blue signs have been attached with bolts driven directly into the wooden pole. While this gives a cleaner look, the signs seem to be prone to coming down. Here's one in Old Ottawa East that fell down at Echo and Graham, which looks like it was damaged in the fall:

While the City builds its own signs in-house the cost of a new sign can come to a few hundred dollars once you factor in installation. In the meantime, navigation is more difficult for people who have no sign to see (and Ottawa has very high standards for signage, compared to what I saw in Montréal).

I recently noticed the street sign for Cambridge Street North at Arlington was coming loose from its post. I called 3-1-1, but the sign was not repaired a couple of weeks later and getting worse.

I then e-mailed the City near the end of October and received a reply from 3-1-1 within three days. On the fourth day, I noticed the sign had been repaired.

For the minimal cost of sending out a crew with a ladder and socket wrench, the City saved the cost and time to make and install a new sign.

358 Arlington rescued

Back in November, the owner of 358 Arlington (behind Harvey's on the West side of Bronson) applied for a permit to demolish the house. The owner of the site was the Bank of Nova Scotia (presumably after having foreclosed on it), which wanted to demolish the house and sell it as a vacant lot.

When I took my photos of Bronson Avenue in early February, I visited the site to take some photos.

The house is rather dilapidated, and looks like a hodgepodge of additions and coverings.

At the rear of the site, there is no yard, only garage. Behind the lot is another building, the business Protocol Floral Express.

The City's demolition process requires concrete plans to be in place for a replacement building before existing housing stock can be demolished. This prevents old buildings from being demolished and turned into parking lots, when what we need is places for people to live. In the case for this building, a replacement building would have to conform to zoning regulations, and therefore wouldn't be able to occupy as much of the site as the current structure. The bank was applying to demolish the building without plans to do anything with the lot (aside from selling it).

The Dalhousie Community Association opposed the permit, and their response is at the end of the Staff report. Councillor Holmes opposed the demolition permit with similar reasons. Meanwhile, the City's planning department considered it to be a done deal and were discussing how to landscape the vacated lot.

The City's Planning & Environment Committee recommended to approve the demolition permit with strict conditions, including that the permit approval would expire if the conditions aren't met within six months. City Council approved this conditional permit later in February.

The house went up for sale as is this Summer, and the "Sold" sticker was added to the sign this past Friday.

I understand that the new owner plans to renovate the house--not demolish it.

Whoever the new owner is, welcome to the neighbourhood!

Gladstone Sports and Health Centre part 3: Dalhousie Food Cupboard and Interior tour

This is the third and final installment of this week's series on the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre at 18 Louisa Street in Dalhousie.

In Part 1, I talked about the history of 18 Louisa and the site on which it sits. In Part 2, I shared photos of the exterior before, during, and after recent renovations of the former school into the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre. Today, I'll show you the inside, during and after construction.

We left off at the new main entrance:

Inside the front doors during construction. The roll at right is the mat/grille to be installed into the recess in the floor by the front doors.

Looking out both sets of front doors. The building is accessible, and has lots of natural sunlight.

Down into the lobby during construction. The elevator is to the left.

The Dalhousie Food Cupboard actually uses the entrance at 399 Arlington, not the main entrance. The non-profit group is affiliated with the Ottawa Food Bank (though they also buy food in bulk), and is one of the busiest in the city, serving an inner-city area with lots of low-income individuals and families in the middle of an area with no supermarkets. Their jurisdiction is roughly the boundary of the former Dalhousie Ward: Ottawa River to Carling Avenue, Bay Street to Breezehill Avenue, between Centretown (served by Centre 507) to the East, and Hintonburg (served by the Parkdale Food Centre) in the West.

The Cupboard is open Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sairah Shahid is the coordinator, but it is otherwise run entirely by volunteers.

The Cupboard has been in operation for at least 16 years, previously in the basement of Erksine Presbyterian Church (now Peace Tower Church) at Bronson and MacLaren, where they paid $800/year in rent. They've been at 18 Louisa since it was the Polonia Centre, and PCL has accommodated them well throughout the renovations. The rent (now considerably more than $800/year) is covered by the City.

In addition to volunteers (especially someone to help with interviews on Tuesdays), Sairah is looking for donations of containers to help distribute food purchased in bulk, including egg cartons, empty margarine containers, and plastic bags.


Getting back to the tour of the building, many of the spaces are still under construction, or awaiting tenants to have them fitted out. This small space on the ground floor is one room used for swing space by the contractors.

Moving to the North end of the building, the ground floor was sealed off for asbestos removal the first time I visited the site.

It's now all clear of asbestos, though the stairway is exit-only, and some work is ongoing on the ground floor.

These ghost marks of the school crest and noticeboard show that this used to be the main entrance. The entire wall has since been painted over in a single colour.

Going up the stairs, here's the view from the third floor. There are boards covering the steps on the first flight because workers are replacing the strip of black grit near the edges of the steps, which have worn over the decades.

Up to the second floor, this is the "activity room" which occupies the space of two former classrooms. In May, it was being used as temporary storage for various building materials.

It is now mostly finished. There will be a few fold-up table tennis tables, and community groups will be able to rent the room at some point in the future.

This is the second-floor hallway during renovations in May. As you can see, they've rebuilt the walls on one side to narrow the hallway and enlarge the Activity Room.

When they finished this wall, they decorated it with some white circles. The doorway to the activity room is at the right, directly opposite the elevator.

The second floor also contains dorms for the national table tennis team when they are in town, as the Canadian Table Tennis Federation is the primary tenant of the Centre.

Unlike purpose-built office buildings, former schools have spacious stairways designed to accommodate large numbers of students. Unfortunately, the stairs are not easily accessed from the new main entrance, and cannot be accessed from the outside; occupants and visitors are expected to use the elevator. Nevertheless, let's take the stairs to the third floor.

As this evacuation plan map indicates, the four former classrooms at the South end of the building are all still for rent, ideally by non-profit community services (or head offices of national non-profit groups).

Each is about 900 square feet, and adjacent units can be joined. They are bare, and can be fitted up as desired by the tenant. Each unit has its own temperature controls (and they work very well, I can say!).

In this room at the South-West corner, we can see that drop ceilings have been installed and the floor and walls have been stripped to concrete. As observed in the previous post, the two south-facing windows are new, while the West-facing window fixtures sit in the existing openings.

If I seem a bit fascinated by windows, it's because my previous office looked out of windows onto a brick wall a few feet away. These are in the South-facing unit next to the gymnasium.

This unit faces East, and is between the South stairwell and the kitchenette. Its floors have been finished.

The hallway on the third floor is interesting, to say the least. Here's a shot of it back in May. The shiny thing on the ceiling at left is part of the HVAC system, but the thing to the right, up against the roof, I suspect is a brace or patch closing over a former roof access.

As the building was built in two parts, the older part (further away in the above photo) didn't have the infrastructure for all the ductwork, so it had to be routed vertically through the hallway.

These channels were covered over and painted with a playful diamond pattern.

On the near end of those columns is the kitchenette. Here it is unfinished in May:

And here it is, finished. It will afford a good view of Fairview Towers during their imminent renovation. The fridge was donated by a sponsor. A table and chairs were later added for use as a lunch room.

At the end of the hallway, the glass brick provides ample natural light to the stairway. The coloured bricks give it a nice decoration.

Here's one of the units during renovations. The old glass bricks are stacked in the middle of the room, as they will not be re-used.

On the end unit, drywall framing is being added. Tenants can also opt to save money by leaving some or all of the walls at cinder block (though cables will need to be routed in plain view). The new windows haven't yet been installed at the end of the building. Behind the framing, you can see the outline of the former chalkboards (they're also noticeable in the unfinished rooms, but behind a coat of primer).

The same unit, finished and painted. It is an open-concept office that will use cubicle dividers to separate the work spaces, allowing more light to permeate the office. It has a semi-soft floor made from recycled rubber tires.

By contrast, this office had five individual offices built, each with a window to channel light into the reception area. The floors were finished with European-manufactured Artline floor tiles, affixed directly to the concrete.

Looking out the window, we can see the main entrance, finishing the tour just as we started it!

If you're interested in volunteering for or donating to the Dalhousie Food Cupboard, pay them a visit on a Tuesday or Thursday between 11am and 2pm.

If you represent a non-profit group that is interested in one of the offices at the Gladstone Sports and Health Centre (or renting the Activity room for an event), contact me and I'll put you in touch with the right people.