The skinny on sidewalk design in Ottawa

Thanks to the Ottawa Lookout, I learned that today at the City's Transportation Committee meeting, Councillor Shawn Menard has a motion in relation to an ongoing review of sidewalk designs.

Since I currently have a cold, I can't present in person, so instead I wrote out a presentation to Transportation Committee. I'm reformatting it here, as a more concise rewrite of my 2014 blog series about Ramp style sidewalks (or "Toronto-style sidewalks", as they were called then).

Wellington Street Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

   [Show/Hide Contents]

• 1955 Traffic and Transportation Plan for Ottawa
• Wellington intersection recommendations
• Wellington-Sparks-Fleet-Commissioner
• Wellington-Broad-Albert-Rochester
• 1949-1953 Collision Statistics
• First Advanced Green signals in town
• What came of it?
• Also on Wellington
• References

If A.E.K. Bunnell's 1946 report covered in Part 5 recommended a few tweaks to the road network, and the 1949 Gréber report we looked at in Part 6 reimagined large swathes of the City's buildings and transportation network, a January 1955 report report on traffic and transportaion in Ottawa by consultants Wilbur Smith & Associates came in somewhere in the middle. No renamings or disconnections of Wellington Street in this installment, this time we're going on full traffic nerd mode.

This 245-page report¹ took a detailed snapshot of traffic in Ottawa, and made a number of specific recommendations, many of which involved Wellington Street. In today's part of the Wellington Street blog series, we'll dive into this report and see what it had to say about traffic in general, and Wellington in particular, in the mid-1950s.

Jane's Walks this weekend!

In case you haven't heard, Jane's Walk Ottawa happens this weekend. I haven't given any since the Rescue Bronson Jane's Walk I gave two years ago. It was fun, but a lot of work. So instead I'll try to go out on a couple of other people's walks. Here are some I'm looking at that are within Somerset Ward, with the description on the Jane's Walk Ottawa website linked to the headings:

Apt613 Blog Walk of Somerset
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 2pm-3:30pm
Meet at Dundonald Park, Somerset and Bay

Staying on the Bronson theme of my 2011 walk, Apartment 613 is holding a walk in Chinatown, whose businesses are suffering from the closure of the Bronson/Somerset intersection. This one has a neat format, where they'll interview some of the business owners in the same way they do interviews for their blog entries, only it'll be live and you'll be there!

Local Confectionaries
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4pm-5pm
Meet at Somerset and Preston

A great segue from the Apt613 walk, local cartoonist/illustrator Colin White is giving a tour of the corner stores which feature often in his drawings. I don't think I've met him in person, but I like his depictions of familiar hyperlocal landmarks.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 6: Poles and signals

Here's part 6 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. In the previous part, we looked at the reconstruction of the roadway along Somerset between Booth and Preston. This time, we'll take a look at the traffic signals and hydro poles in the same stretch.

You'll note that the longer posts are now shortened on the summary pages. You can read more about that here.

Most of the photos in this post were taken in the winter, after Eric Darwin pointed out some concerns with the traffic signal pole design on his blog, West Side Action. I took this one, showing a carefully choreographed dance between two cherry pickers at Somerset and LeBreton, in mid-February.

Even though this is a couple of blocks east of the project limits at Booth Street, it looks like the opportunity was taken to replace some of the other streetposts that had been chipped away by years of snowplows edging past.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 5: Under Chinatown (Booth to Preston)

Last time, in part 4 of the series will take a short walk down the sidewalks of Rochester and Spruce. Previously, in part 3 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West, I showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. This time, we stay on the east side of Preston Street for the reconstruction of the roadway itself.

The intersection of Somerset Street West and Booth Street is a heavy pedestrian area, and for historical reasons is very skewed. For both of these reasons, the crosswalks are painted with well-defined zebra stripes. As of June 2011, the work was just getting started on this phase of the work, which continues down the hill past Rochester to Preston Street.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 4: Contemporary sidewalk design, not on Rochester

I swapped parts 4 and 5 of this series so I could put this one in as a Peds On Weds Wednesday post.

The previous post of this 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West showed the reconstruction of the sidewalks between Booth and Preston. Rochester is the street in between these two, and I figured we could take a little detour to talk about some sidewalk work in the area, and sidewalks in general.

While the roads, sidewalks and utilities underneath them were being dug up along Somerset Street West this past summer, the sidewalks were being replaced on Rochester Street and Spruce.

Not too far north of Somerset, the old sidewalks were dug up in early September, after the rest of the block was already prepared for concrete to be poured.

At the north end of the block, looking toward Somerset from Spruce, we can see the shape of the concrete forms creating the bulbouts (which are not new to this corner).

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 3: Wider sidewalks

Here in the third part of the 15-part series on the 2011 reconstruction of Somerset Street West, we'll follow up on the Previous post about sidewalks by marching up the hill in Chinatown. On foot, of course.

In December, the curbs at Booth Street were being laid for the new sidewalks outside Nasa Food Centre. Behind them, the old sidewalks were still in place. You can see how much more room pedestrians have been afforded on the sidewalks.

In September, the work at Rochester Street was still only a few weeks in. The sidewalks were dug up pretty badly.