Bixi's back for 2013

As of today, Capital Bixi is back in action! For subscribers like me, that means my key should work for the remainder of my one-year subscription (which I bought last June). And for you readers of my blog, that means I'm going to blog about it!

I never got around to blogging my Bixi photos last year (and the year before, my season-opener blog post used photos from the 2009 pilot), so I get to include some of those with this post. For example, the one above was taken last June at the Museum of Nature's east lawn, at Elgin and McLeod. On Saturday night, the bikes had been re-installed, though it was decidedly snowier:

One last (hopefully) blast of winter

The weather forecast suggests that we'll be getting another 20-centimetre blast of snow in the next couple of days. This might be my last chance this year to get some of my winter-related photos out before trying to forget that season and focus on spring and summer. So here goes.

Here's an inuksuk I built outside Bridgehead on Elgin after a snowstorm in December. It was one of those ones with really sticky snow. A couple of days after falling, that sticky snow had hardened into snow you could cut chunks from.

That was actually from the storm pictured below on Gladstone, where the snow 'flakes' were the size of frosted mini wheats. I hope this week's storm doesn't bring us this heavy stuff:

Stairway to Centretown

Looking up the stairs to Queen Elizabeth Driveway from the Lisgar entrance to the Rideau Canal Skateway.


There's a new unofficial website for canal enthusiasts on the go. The page includes a colour-coded map of the ice conditions, in a format more suited to mobile phone browsers than the NCC's page: thebluefactor.com/canal. Winterlude wraps up on next week's long weekend, from Friday to Family Day on Monday. The canal is always open, weather permitting. So get out there and have some fun!

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

A safer crossing for pedestrians on Somerset

Well, the City of Ottawa has been on a roll, fixing up a number of problems that have been on my list for a while, including fixing the potholes on Lewis and the sign at McLeod and Bank, as I blogged recently.

Those were both nuisance issues, but one true safety problem has been fixed: the lack of crosswalk lines at Somerset Street West and The Driveway.

To recap, this was perhaps the only stop sign in Centretown that wasn't accompanied by a stop bar and crosswalk lines, depriving motorists of an important cue to give right-of-way to cross traffic (including pedestrians and cyclists). I'd been nearly hit on my bike by a motorist who stopped at the stop sign, but blindly started again without registering that I had the right of way along Somerset (thanks to my yell, he braked hard and his bumper just tapped my front fork).

In this photo, it looks more like a laneway to motorists coming from the right.

I'd noticed this past spring that the lines at the nearby intersection of the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and Somerset West were faded, suggesting that the city would be repainting soon. A prime opportunity to add crosswalk lines to The Driveway (the near intersection in the photo below). And this was the gist of my April post on the subject, which I forwarded to City Hall.

Crossing the Driveway on Somerset West

[Oops! Looks like I scheduled this to go up on Tuesday instead of Monday. There might not be a Wednesday post this week.]

Here's a photo of Queen Elizabeth Drive and Somerset Street West back in 2006, when the yet-to-be-named Corktown Footbridge was still under construction. While the top layer of asphalt is scraped off anyway, there weren't any crosswalks painted at the intersection, nor were there stop signs. The traffic patterns at the intersection before the bridge was built didn't warrant it (at least in the NCC's eyes).

Once the bridge opened, that was another story. The hordes of pedestrians and cyclists crossing made it clear that the NCC would have to relent and put in stop signs. This shot, like the one above, is from my old blog following the construction progress of the bridge, over at pedbridge.blogspot.com. Note how the curb depression is partway in the crosswalk (for pedestrians) and partway in the intersection (for cyclists). The bridge design had a lot of input from the Ottawa Cycling Advisory Committee (which since merged into the current Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee)