Peds on Weds: Back turned on the public realm

[Note: at 2pm today, the pedestrian advocacy group Walk Ottawa will be holding a ceremony to place a pedestrian memorial marker at Rideau and Waller, where a pedestrian lost her life to a tractor-trailer in February. Details can be found here, here, and here]

This is a topic I wanted to post about months ago but never got around to, around when Urbsite thoroughly covered the 1970's guidelines for a second-floor enclosed pedestrian system. These guidelines implemented ideas envisioned by such documents as the 1965 Hammer Report (discussed in this post of mine) for a completely segregated pedestrian system, which would allow motorists dominion over the street-level public right-of-way downtown:

Urbsite is almost finished its nine-part series on the planning and (more planning, and) development of the Rideau Centre. In the most recent post, instalment 8 of 9, the author used a bunch of photos I'd taken which I shared with him. (I figured letting him post my best Rideau Centre pics would help me focus on Centretown... I'm not sure that worked!)

I took this photo this past Boxing Week, showing the wider of the two pedestrian overpasses/skywalks/pedways between the Rideau Centre and the Bay. The Bay has made use of this space for additional merchandising. It's perhaps not the best use of such a space, but at least it's being used. This was envisioned in the plans for the Rideau Centre skywalks, and for Ottawa's skywalks in general:

In this photo, one of the ones used on Urbsite, we can see how this affects the outside though. As hinted by the phrase "inward-facing merchandise" in Urbsite's caption for this photo, the merchandise is entirely focused on the shoppers inside the skywalk. As if the skywalk doesn't close in the streetscape enough on its own, the Bay's merchandise literally turns its back on the thousands of potential customers outside.

It doesn't need to. The little drawings of skywalks envisioned in the '70s showed lots of space around the shopping racks, where shoppers could peruse, peer out, and peer in. The skywalk was an extension of the public realm, but instead it has become part of the closed-off public space. They could have at least hung some display merchandise on the backs of the cabinets to serve as long-distance window-shopping!

I highly recommend reading Urbsite's series on the development of the Rideau Centre. It's a fascinating story with many twists and turns (and period images!) Start with part 1 here.

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

From the "fake trees" department...

There was a brief period in the design for the Bronson Avenue reconstruction when the consultants responded to residents' desire for more trees by suggesting fake metal 'trees' to provide shade to pedestrians, since there would be no room for real trees in the widened Bronson Avenue. Thankfully, this suggestion was short lived, and circumstances changed to permit a lot of real trees.

Across from the Rideau Centre's food court a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this row of branches lined up outside the entrance to 45 Rideau Street, next to the Chapters. It looks like they have been lined up as fake 'trees' to provide a structure on which to mount decorative lights.

In fairness, if these were real trees they wouldn't have leaves at this time of year anyway.

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

3D Thursday: Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau #nbog13

I took a number of photos during this year's rainy-but-well-attended Nuit Blanche Ottawa+Gatineau on September 21/22, but only two 3D photos. I no longer have two cameras and it's hard to take a pair of stills with moving people in the shot.

Both of the 3D photos I took were in the Market. This tree was nicely done up on George Street, I think by the O-Town [Yarn-]Bombers:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

You can see the two exposures by closing one eye, then the other. I think between exposures, a couple of the lights were turned off in the condo building in the background.

With brightly-coloured things like this, the colour shots don't work quite as well because red objects only appear in one eye and blue objects only appear in the other. Here's the same photo again with the colours removed before converting the layers to red and cyan:

The next one is a photographic sculpture by Susy Oliviera at SAW Gallery, called Have Everything and Die. The wall behind was red, so I didn't even bother trying to do the 3D conversion in colour (but I've left the colour in the source photos below).

This sculpture is ideal for photographing in 3D, because a regular photo doesn't capture the essence of it. It's a bunch of pieces of photo moulded together into a kind of sculpture (she had another, photographed on Peter Simpson's Big Beat blog here), but instead of the face put convex (with the nose pointing out), it's concave (with the cheeks and nose going inward):

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

That's a pretty important part of the piece that you don't get with a regular photo of the sculpture.

But a really neat thing about the 3D photos is if you flip your 3D glasses around (i.e. the red filter on your right eye instead of your left eye), it looks convex! This is a neat twist on the old paper dragon illusion or the rotating mask illusion.


While I'm talking about Nuit Blanche 2013, I should mention that I happened to be in Toronto this October to see Ai Weiwei's Forever Bicycles sculpture, which was installed outside Toronto City Hall for their Nuit Blanche. The colour-changing lighting scheme prevented me from taking any photos in 3D (since I'd need to take two photos in succession), but it's still really neat:

The description says that it's made up of 3,144 bicycles, and the title is a play on the name of China's largest bicycle brand, Yong Jiu, which translates as "forever".

They're not real bicycles, but rather a steel representation of bicycle frames. But the wheels are real bicycle wheels and they all spin freely!

It's possible I'm just imagining it, but from a distance, it looks like the shape of the sculpture is a pair of giant bicycles heading each other off on Nathan Phillips Square:

Truly mesmerising! A shame I couldn't get this shot in 3D!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images. 3D FAQ]

Peds on Weds: No; more ifs, ands, or buttons

Back in May I had a lengthy blog post titled No ifs, ands or buttons which described in detail how terribly complicated pedestrian buttons are in a road environment that is designed for cars.

Since that post, I noticed a few more situations I omitted about pedestrian buttons. These examples are all at the edge of Centretown or just outside it.

Outside the fancy new Ottawa Convention Centre at Colonel By Drive and Daly on the other side of the Rideau Canal, some of the concrete pavers are lined up with grooves in the middle. This is an accessibility feature so that the visually impaired can safely direct themselves to the crosswalk safely, and stop before getting to the edge. The grooves in poured concrete sidewalks perform the same function (and most streets that have precast pavers for sidewalks will use a concrete pad at the intersection to provide these accessibility features). Can you see the problem?

The groove takes you to the centre of the crosswalk, but the buttons you need to press to activate the pedestrian signal are at the edges of the crosswalk. And this crosswalk is so wide that the button on the right side didn't even fit into the shot.

But at least at that intersection, the button is necessary for anyone to use the crosswalk—not just the visually impaired—so at least there's someone else there to activate the crossing signal. As mentioned in the May entry, this is discernible by the sign above the button on the pole. If our blind pedestrian is lucky, the sighted pedestrian will press the button for three or more seconds, activating the audible signal, instead of just the quick press required to request the crossing.

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]

Top of the Rideau '77

While visiting family overseas at the end of August*, I digitally scanned the photo albums so I could have a copy. Since my grandparents had been stationed in Ottawa in the mid 1970s, some prominent Ottawa landmarks made their way into the background of some of the photos.

This small set of photos depicts a boat parade on the Rideau Canal in May of 1977, presumably for the tulip festival. The photos were taken from alongside the Rideau Canal by the NAC, looking across the canal to the east side. Here, for example, is Union Station (now the Government Conference Centre):

A less prominent building was also photographed that day: Canada Post's Ottawa Station A (Station B is at Sparks & Elgin), located on a part of Besserer Street that's now buried under the Rideau Centre:

Follow the yellow line

Sorry for the absence. I was busy running the bicycle parking at Bluesfest 2011, which is a 100-hour-a-week volunteer gig. You'll be happy to hear that I've got over two weeks of posts pre-scheduled, so there won't be another gap for at least as long!

Most of the time, when a pathway in the national capital region splits, the yellow line will follow the direction where the pathway continues in whatever direction. For example, if you're trying to navigate the pathways under the Portage Bridge to get westward from behind the Parliament buildings, following the yellow line will help you get back to the pathway along the Ottawa River.

Many cyclists don't realize this, but they do get it at an unconscious level. Take here for example:

This is just under the Laurier bridge heading North toward the convention centre and Byward Market, on the pathway that runs along Colonel By Drive. This is a notoriously difficult place to navigate because it's not clear at all how to get from here to the other side of Rideau/Sussex.

Unfortunately, when I stopped to watch for a bit, I saw most cyclists followed the yellow line up to the abutment of the Laurier Bridge, which led them to a dead end and a hard curb along Colonel By Drive. They, as I had done just before them, ended up going down the steep cobbled footings of the bridge to get back to the pathway along the Rideau Canal and continue toward Union Station.

Unfortunately, even if this line gets fixed (which it might, there was still some construction going on when I took this photo in May 2011), there's not much place for people to go once they pass the bridge, it's still every cyclist to him- or herself to navigate Colonel By, Sussex, and the rest.

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

University Centre - Jock Turcot building

As with the University of Ottawa's Montpetit building, the Jock Turcot building (or University Centre/Unicentre) is one of those buildings that looks great on paper in the renderings from a couple of angles, but when it's built looks like a big ugly concrete and glass behemoth 95 percent of the time. You have to go down (or up) a flight of shallow concrete stairs to enter the building, as though the architect were ashamed of letting people inside.

When I took this photo last July, it happened to be one of the rare times when you're looking at the building from the right angle, and the sun is in the right part of the sky, that it doesn't look ugly and dreary, but actually sort of--dare I say it--interesting.

Of course, on such a sunny day, these glass-enclosed meeting rooms that stick out to the south are stifling hot and the air conditioning just doesn't get it right.

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

uOttawa - Montpetit building

I snapped this photo back in February when the sun was at just the right angle to light up the desks inside the offices of the Montpetit building at the University of Ottawa. With this lighting, you can almost imagine the architect's rendering of how the building would look when the slant-window office structure was proposed. Each window is a different office, and no two are alike!

It looks like a cross-section of a cubicle farm, or the office equivalent of a Japanese hotel. Most people have the backs of their desks facing the window, with computer cables dangling in the window. I don't think that was in the architect's drawings!

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

263, 267 and 271 Besserer Street to be demolished (Sandy Hill)

Tomorrow, the City's Planning and Environment Committee will be considering the demolition of three Besserer Street properties, 263, 267 and 271 Besserer in Sandy Hill.

From the Report:

263 Besserer Street

The building at this property is the most westerly building of the three and City records show that it is occupied by a two storey duplex dwelling. It is vacant and was constructed in 1892. It is a Category II building on the City's Heritage Reference List, which means that this building has been identified, as being of heritage interest but it has not been officially designated under Part IV or Part V of the Heritage Act.

267 Besserer Street

This is the middle building of the three and it is a two-storey single detached dwelling. It is also vacant and was constructed in 1892. It is a Category III building on the City of Ottawa Heritage Reference List...

271 Besserer Street

This is the most easterly of the three buildings. Like the other two, it was also constructed in 1892 and is two storeys in height. City records show it has been used as a duplex dwelling. Like the building adjacent to the west, this building has been listed as a Category III building on the Heritage Reference List...

The report shows a site map, but doesn't have photos of the buildings themselves. I had taken some last time I was in the area, so here they are:


They're clearly dis-used and the balconies have been removed.

Apparently, they've been empty for a while and vandalized while the property owner waits for the right time to develop the whole block (including Steve's Music and Nate's Deli on the Rideau side) into another mega-condo, like this one a couple blocks over, which has taken the place of Mexicali Rosa's and whose conjoined twin is currently under construction:
There's still no planned timeline for the replacement building to be built, and the demolition of these three 1890's houses is merely to keep them from being inhabited. Reminds me of the boarded-up buildings at Bay and Nepean, which could have remained in use for the many years they've sat there empty.

Hopefully new residences will be built in less time than it has taken to rebuild Lebreton Flats.

Sandy Hill heritage photographers should snap some shots of these buildings while they're still there.

Traffic Operations Division Tour, part II

In Part I, I described the first part of the tour of the City of Ottawa's Traffic Operations Division at 175 Loretta Street, just off of Gladstone past the O-Train tracks. This is the building from which they monitor and control traffic operations, as well as prepare signs and signals for installation.

In today's part, I'll go over the signage operations.

After the previous room, we went down a hall to the double-height sign room in the back of the building's lower level.

They had an assortment of signs lying on the side wall, presumably custom signs. They gave names to the ducks on the one in the middle one:

These big ones go on top of traffic signal standards at intersections. There isn't much to get the scale, but they're big--the tall ones are person-sized. The peice of letter-sized paper on the one on the left gives an idea of scale. They have to be big to see them from so far away, as they're at nearly every passive signal and at major roads.

We then went into a small room cut off from the main sign room where they cut out one of the thousands of (de)signs. They use a variety of methods, including silkscreening (like for making t-shirts, where each pass is a different colour), but most are designed and cut using computer-aided software. Thanks to computers, they've been able to reduce staffing requirements by about 50% over the last twenty years.

This particular sheet contains the numbers for the new population signs--the population of Ottawa has recently gone up to 900,000!

They make about 3000 regular signs per year, and 2300 custom signs. But it's inefficient to make just one sign, so they make a bunch of them and store them. Here's a view of the storage room. They had a series of these huge racks of signs. At the start of each day, they'll load up onto the trucks the signs that they'll need for the day.

In the background you can see they have three different sizes of stop signs. In the foreground, Traffic Operations Manager Jim Bell holds up a no-left-turn sign. Again, the signs are a lot bigger than you might think when you see them on the street.

The material on the signs is made with a retroreflective coating, which means that light bounces back to where it came from. By comparison, if you were to hold a flashlight near your eye and point it at a mirror, it would only shine back in your eyes if the mirror is facing you straight-on. Jim showed us that newer signs are made with little prisms, which are five times more reflective than the old reflective-ball coating.

They had a couple of specific signs, too, such as a pre-assembled pair for the intersection of Island Park Drive and Island Park Crescent. In the back are some yellow "Operation Lookout" signs. You don't see these in Centretown; they're mostly put on higher-speed roads to distract people with educational messages.

Some bike signs, as this was, after all, a tour for the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee...

And at the back of the room were some de-commissioned street signs from former municipalities. These are taken down when a street's signs are replaced with the new blue ones that sport the new City of Ottawa logo. (The new blue ones also have bigger lettering) You can actually buy these old signs from the City for $10--a steal! The City keeps a list of decommissioned signs in inventory, and you can order them by e-mail and pick them up at 175 Loretta. (I've ordered Somerset Street West and Preston.)

Lastly, here's a photo of a sign in action! This bike route sign is encouraging cyclists to ride in the gravel-filled part of Stewart Street.

Oh well. I guess signs can't do everything!

Tune in Wednesday for part III of the tour: traffic signals + epilogue