Snow removal on Bank Street (video)

On the left, the snow accumulation on Bank Street's west sidewalk from the previous snowfall. On the right, the mostly-bare road and sidewalk minutes after the City took the same snowbanks away from the east side of Bank Street last night:

I described the process in more detail in my 2012 post, "Snow removal on Kent." In summary, some very deft sidewalk plow operators push the snow from around various obstacles on the sidewalk into the road. Then graders like this one go by to arrange this snow into a straight row on the roadway:

Then, of course, the big snow blower machine comes by to whisk the snow (and ice!) all away with ease, while a lineup of trucks follow in wait of their turn to collect the snow from the blower:

I took a video of the blower going by. Watch it in stunning HD:

As described at a briefing last week at the City's Transportation Committee, snow removal (that is, physically removing it from the road and taking it someplace else, as opposed to snow clearing, which is just pushing it aside) makes up the biggest part of the City's winter maintenance budget. Of the $11.8M spent to clean up after the December 20 storm, most ($7.2M) was spent on snow removal. By contrast, $873,000 was spent on sidewalk clearing during and after that storm, which amounts to about a dollar per person for that one storm.

Winter & Summer across from Snider

Entirely by accident, I managed to take the exact same photo twice, six months apart. Just the tiniest amount of cropping and rotating was needed on these two photos of 353-355-357 Bank Street, on the east side between Laurier and Slater, across from Snider Plaza. Having done that, making an animated GIF of the two images was just irresistible:

From left to right, the stores are BabyFace, Bowitch, Jade Spa, and Kiddytown. It's interesting to see what changes and what doesn't. For example, unchanging are the "Summer Discount" signs in Kiddytown's windows, even in February. Under the 'change' heading, it is possible to see how the weight of the leaves weighs down the branches of the smaller tree.

Since the GIF reduces the image quality, here are the two source photos as JPGs (after rotation and cropping) in case you wanted to play with them. (Picasa 3.8 lets you view two photos side-by-side and zoom in, which is perfect for this). Click them to view/download larger. If you're sufficiently nerdy to want them, you'd probably also like to know that the summer photo was taken in August around 6:30pm, and the winter one in February around 3:30pm.

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

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 14: Bridge railings

Just as the work is underway to put the finishing touches on the reconstruction of Somerset Street west from Booth to Preston to the O-Train bridge, this 15-part series documenting that reconstruction is nearing an end. After going over the roadway and sidewalk reconstruction and the O-Train pathway, we finished off Part 13 with a look at the temporary boardwalk cantilevered over the side of the Somerset bridge while the O-Train pathway was being built (covered in Part 12).

In this second-to-last post in the series, I'll tell you all about the railings on this bridge/viaduct, as shown here at Takaki Automotive, 47 Breezehill:

While I wouldn't go so far as to claim they deserve official heritage status, the railings do have some history to them. They formed the backdrop of a couple scenes in the Rolling Stone's music video for Streets of Love, filmed in Ottawa. The bridge is around 1:15 to 1:40. Interspersed in the video with scenes shot live at Zaphod's are other Centretown landmarks such as the former Stinson & Son at 435 Gladstone (1:45 and 2:11) and Domestic Foods, the corner store just down the block from me, at Gladstone and Percy (1:50 to 1:57):

Winterlude fireworks

There were some rather spectacular fireworks on Friday as part of Winterlude. The NCC promoted them as being even better than the annual Canada Day fireworks, and by all accounts, they were. While I didn't get to see those fireworks, there were more fireworks on the Rideau Canal Skateway on Saturday night at Fifth Avenue, and I happened to be there at the right time to snap some photos. I tweeted this one at the time, and it's good enough that I thought I'd share it here on the blog, too:

If, like me, you didn't get a chance to see Friday's spectacle, this amateur video, courtesy of Let's Go Ottawa, captured it really well:

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

City removes heads from parking meters; exposes bikes to theft (video)

The last couple weeks, the City of Ottawa has been removing parking meters as part of their plan to switch to Pay & Display parking, and convert some parking meters to ring-and-post bike racks. Unfortunately, despite various assurances, there won't be enough racks to replace the lost meters.

Here is a shot of the City workers removing racks on Somerset street at Arthur:

As was reported in the Ottawa Citizen today, the City has removed the heads of parking meters on Frank street that still had bikes attached. The City claims they have added a fixture to the tops of the posts to protect the bikes from being stolen, but they do not offer the protection of a parking meter head: bike locks can still be easily lifted over the tops of the posts and the bikes stolen, without any tools.

Ironically, we used to tell cyclists not to lock their bikes to signposts because the signs could be unbolted and the bike lifted over them. Instead, we recommended parking meters (which, since they contained money, had to be securely fastened into the ground). Now I guess the reverse is true!

See the video below for a demonstration of how a bike lock could easily be lifted over the bar. If the lock is only attached to the frame, a thief could easily lift the bike off and ride the bike away, and nobody would think it the least bit suspicious:

If you come across a place where there isn't anywhere to lock your bike, please e-mail 311@ottawa.ca and cc your councillor, especially if there used to be a parking meter there.

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

CCCA Documentary now online, AGM next week

The annual general meeting (AGM) of the Centretown Citizens Community Association is Tuesday, 7pm @ City Hall (Colonel By Room), and a lot of people may not know what the association is all about.

While the association's many members and eight committees are also involved in a lot of current initiatives, including the mid-Centretown Community Design Plan being conducted by the City and the Rescue Bronson Avenue effort being led by the CCCA in partnership with other community groups, our biggest accomplishment has been the groundbreaking community-driven process to develop the Centretown Plan in the 1970s and our continued efforts since then to defend the Plan. But the Centretown Community Association (as it was known at the time) was formed in 1969--four years before the Centretown Plan was initiated. I talked a bit about the context for this in a post in August 2009.

At last year's AGM, I presented a slideshow on the beginnings of the CCCA on behalf of the Centretown Heritage Committee, and in April turned this into a video which was screened at a special event, where the four couples who started the association were given honourary lifetime membership in the CCCA.

I'm now able to share this video which shows how much hard work has been contributed to make Centretown the wonderful neighbourhood it is today. View it below or on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlPtm2dN95E

I hope this video inspires you to come to the CCCA's Annual General Meeting on Tuesday and that you will and participate in our activities to carry on this long history of making Centretown a great place to live, work, and play.

CHP Video: 50 Years since streetcars; Bank Construction

I'm about to head out to the Plant Pool Dessert Party and Bake Sale, organized by the Plant Pool Recreation Association in support of a new kindergarten play structure for Cambridge Street Elementary.

But before I head out, I wanted to share with you some news.

Bank Street between Somerset and Arlington is now closed for construction this summer. And one of the first things they've done is dig up a bunch of old streetcar ties that were still beneath the surface:

This is timely, as April 30, 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the end of regular streetcar service in Ottawa.

Carlington Community Association President and Friends of the O-Train member Michael Kostiuk assembled this commemorative video of amateur streetcar footage by Lucien Dauphinais, a Montreal Tramways streetcar operator who came up to Ottawa on numerous occasions during the 1950's with his 8mm film movie camera:

I have lots of photos of streetcar ties dug up from last year's phase of Bank Street reconstruction between Laurier and Somerset, but the really neat photos are those of the ties still embedded in the roads, as seen in this cross-section:

Back to the present, Bank is closed from Somerset to Gladstone, and South of Gladstone there's some wavy obstacle-course pylons going on:

They've also removed the bulbout at McLeod, to allow traffic to go straight through while Bank is closed:

And streets like Flora have been converted for two-way traffic. They've also removed the little bulbout on the left in this photo. You may also notice the no-left-turn signs in the distance at Kent:

And here's a gratuitous glamour shot of Barrymore's, just for kicks:

Oh, and if you can't make it to the dessert party but would still like to support the Cambridge Street Elementary parents' fundraising efforts, you can buy these delightful little gift cards featuring artwork made by the kindergarten students, $5 for a pack of five:



For other old photos, check out posts labelled CHP for images in the Centretown Heritage Project series.

Tommy & Lefebvre fire

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the Tommy & Lefebvre store at 464 Bank Street suffered a terrible fire. The location was the flagship store for the family-owned company established in 1958. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Here's a shot of the store from last fall:

Marc Racine a pris un video de l'incendie, qu'il a mis sur YouTube:

By Tuesday afternoon, all that was left was the charred shell of the building. But the sun still glistens off the trim and the building stands tall and proud, just like the owners who vow to rebuild.

Parts of the roof have collapsed, and the windows were all broken in. The building spans nearly a whole block.

The Southbound lanes were closed to traffic, with the Northbound lanes left open to minimize congestion. T&L Vice-President Natalie Tommy chats with some onlookers as police and fire vehicles populate the background:

The Vietnamese Kitchen next door as well as the adjoining apartments escaped serious damage, but they'll still be closed for a while due to the smoke damage. The fire marshall, climbing on the roof of the building, will determine when it's safe to return.

The rarely-used back doors of the building were open, and the glass tubes of the familiar neon lights were broken. A golf bag is on the sidewalk in front of the empty window displays.

The signs on the outside are just slightly singed by fire, but they belie the $2 million in estimated damages inside.

Along the side of the building, you can clearly see the marks left by the ferocious flames we saw in the video, as an engineer enters the building to inspect the damage.

Two workers from the City's signage department install signs permitting two-way traffic on McLeod from Kent to Bank, so that people can still access their houses on the other side of the blocked street. (This will also be useful in the upcoming construction on Bank Street this summer)

Centretown has had a few fires in the last little while: the two arsons in the building at Bank and Somerset, Aimee's Convenience store, among others. The site at Florence and Bank remains vacant since the fire at 2003, though I distinctly recall Galaxy Camera announcing their flagship store to be constructed there.

As for T&L, they'll rebuild. They're tough. They'll get through this.

Traffic Operations Division Tour, part I

[This is the first of a three-part series. Part II, Part III + epilogue.]

Last Monday, I had the opportunity of sitting in on a meeting of the City's Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee, a group of individual volunteers (mostly cyclists) who provide official input to the City on cycling issues. The City has other Advisory Committees, including RCAC's sibling committee, the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee (which is chaired by CCCA President Shawn Menard), the Local Architecture Conservation Advisory Committee, the Poverty Issues Advisory Committee, the Business Advisory Committee, etc. These committees are an inexpensive and very valuable form of input to the City.

This particular meeting was special because it was held at the City's Traffic Operations Division building at 175 Loretta, off of Gladstone just past the O-Train tracks. I took lots of photos (and even a video) and will be dividing up the tour into three posts (which will be scheduled to post in three-day intervals.

Here's the outside of the building. The sign at the front still has the old Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton (RMOC) logo. You can see the Queensway in the back.

This is the traffic control room. From here, they monitor the 96 traffic cameras around the City. (You can watch them too on the City's website here!) While the online cameras are pretty low resolution and only refresh every few seconds, the ones in the control room display like regular video. They've been monitoring traffic since 1976!

Those two screens at the bottom are a visual display of all the intersections in the City, which monitors each traffic signal once a second. At the back of the room was a large screen showing one of these displays. If you look carefully, number 112 has a red dot next to it, incidating a problem of some sort.

Along the back wall are monitors showing three of the MTO's traffic cameras along the 417.

Now here's the cool part. All 96 cameras can be remotely controlled with pan/tilt/zoom. Here, Omar is at the controls giving a look around the city.

I took a video of him zipping through the Bank/Somerset intersection. He can even see down to Kent! This gives a better idea of what it's like watching all these video monitors. And this is at 6pm--it must be really fun watching during the day!

There are three different levels of traffic systems that they use to control the signals: regular signal timing schedules based on yearly data, statistics and traffic patterns; 5000 sensor systems in the roads that modify the signal timing on a per-cycle basis based on current traffic contidions; and manual override by operators like Omar, above.

This chart shows the way the signals are organized. Many of them are synchronized, so that you can drive along of stretch of road and get green lights most of the way. The rest are free, which means that their cycles aren't dependent on other intersections. The implications of this is that on a free intersection, if you're on a cross street and press the pedestrian button, the light can change immediately. On a synchronized intersection, it has to wait until a specific part of the cycle before it changes. With time for pedestrian crossings, protected left turns, and through traffic, the minimum time for a cycle at an average intersection is about 80 seconds.

Here, Tom Fitzgerald, Superintendent of Traffic Operations, demonstrates how a signal loop triggers from the metal in a sledgehammer (representing the metal in a bicycle). Three yellow dots are placed on loops at intersections to indicate the place where the signal is strongest. When you put your bike over the yellow dots, it will detect your bike and change the light at the right part of the cycle. Some other jurisdictions use a small bicycle stencil to mark this function, which is more expensive. Others use red, yellow and green circles. (This photo is also a sneak-peek of the third post on signals)

The third level is manual intervention. At the back of the traffic control room is a row of computer stations where people monitor traffic and make interventions where necessary, such as changing the messages on overhead message boards (I think the closest one of these to Centretown is on the Bank Street bridge over the Canal heading toward Lansdowne Park). This room was full of people during Barack Obama's visit last month. You can also get a bit of a view of the server room through the glass door at the other end of the room.

Above the screen in the meeting room was the Department's Mission Statement plaque from pre-amalgamation: "We are dedicated to the delivery of transportation services that enhance the quality of life in Ottawa-Carleton."

And that's the end of Part I. Stay tuned for Part II: signs on Monday, and Part III: signals on Wednesday.

My Centretown includes culture

I'm pulling an all-nighter, so I'm a bit too tired to comment. Nevertheless, I hope you'll enjoy this brief pair of video clips from today's--er, yesterday's--rally at City Hall:

I'll be making my budget delegation tomorrow--er, in about five hours (hence the all-nighter).

Video of the Union railway, pre-Colonel By Parkway

Drumbent tipped me off to this 1965 Buster Keaton clip of "The Railrodder" (sic--think "hot rod"). In clip 2 of the film, Buster is seen riding his rail car along the Rideau Canal, under the Laurier bridge, toward Union Station and past Parliament Hill.

Exciting to see what it was like before it all got paved over!

Compare this shot with Laurier bridge and the Chateau Laurier in the background from 1965:


With this shot from 2005 at the start of the construction of the Corktown Footbridge:


Quite a bit has changed! More trees, but also more big ugly buildings (plus the U of O's Desmarais building which has gone up since)

Will rail ever make a comeback, I wonder?

The Bridgehead Birds (with videos)

I had the opportunity to visit Beijing a few years back (just before the SARS scare), and one of the tings I remarked over the 10 or so days I was there was that I only noticed two birds during the whole trip.

In Centretown, the situation is much different. Here's Bridgehead on Elgin, as taken from the 2nd storey of the Fox and Feather Pub--essentially the reverse of the first photo in this post. (Note: the steak was good at the F&F, but everything else was pretty cheap. Salad was tasteless, and dressing comes in individual Kraft packages.)

I frequently go here after work, and if it's a nice day out (or if it's freezing inside), I'll sit on the patio, read the papers, do the crossword, meet a friend, or perhaps prepare a blog entry or two. Here's a nice shot of the view from mid-June:

There is a small flock of birds that likes to hang out in the little garden next to the patio, and these birds bring much pleasure and enjoyment. Here they are this past week, one of them (presumably the mother) feeding the others crumbs off the pavement: