{"id":5137,"date":"2011-03-01T00:05:45","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T05:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=5137"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:08:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:08:59","slug":"bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”spacing” id=”72157625981981811″]<\/p>\n

__________________<\/span><\/p>\n

The above images<\/a> were posted recently by Kathryn Hunt on her Incidental Cyclist<\/a> blog. Kathryn is an all-season cyclist and in the winter months she often documents the challenges and hazards of staying on two wheels in the slush and the ice. As thaws come and go, by February a new cycling hazard appears — the kind of tire-flattening, rim-bending potholes seen in the pictures above.<\/p>\n

Looking at them something becomes clear – a hell of a lot of potholes appear in the curb side lane, close in to the sidewalk, near the gutter drains. That’s where you would expect the freeze-and-thaw cause of potholes to be at the worst, of course. The cracks nearest the drains fill with water which turns to ice and pries them further apart, the next thaw attracts more meltwater, and the next freeze opens the cracks even wider.<\/p>\n

So why do we engineer our streets to drain to the curb, where the potholes are most likely to create serious hazards for cyclists and the puddles they contain are most likely to splash all over pedestrians? Basically, that’s what West Side Action’s Eric Darwin was asking last fall, with this post:<\/a><\/p>\n

I think we will continue to have drainage problems … as long as we continue to design our rights of ways for cars and not pedestrians. For pedestrian benefit, drainage should be away from the curb to catch basins in the centre line of the street. This would have the additional benefit of making the street undulate from basin to basin, which would reduce speeding. Got that? It\u2019s that simple: drain away from sidewalks, not to them. Encourage pedestrians to walk on the dry parts, not the wettest part of the road.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Away<\/em> from the curb! It sounds so simple, and yet a prolonged image search turned up no examples of street drainage using such a technique. Amazingly, the only image I could find of “centre drainage” was not of a street, but of a sidewalk — in fact, a sidewalk recently rebuilt right here in Ottawa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Laudably for the city engineering department, the principle behind this sidewalk rebuild actually seems to have been somewhat innovative. Water will still <\/em>splash up from the curbside to the sidewalk, but at least a given puddle will only do so once, unlike typical slanted sidewalks that would drain the water right back down to the street, to be splashed all over someone again.<\/p>\n

So do we dare to imagine that Ottawa could ever take such an innovation to where the rubber hits the road?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”spacing” id=”72157625981981811″] __________________ The above images were posted recently by Kathryn Hunt on her Incidental Cyclist blog. Kathryn is an all-season cyclist and in the winter months she often documents the challenges and hazards of staying on two wheels in the slush and the ice. As thaws come and go, by February a newContinue reading “Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5066,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5296],"tags":[2999,339,919,1374,1114,394,3000,2394,348],"class_list":["post-5137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bikes","tag-all-season-cyclist","tag-cycling","tag-eric-darwin","tag-incidental-cyclist","tag-kathryn-hunt","tag-ottawa","tag-prolonged-image-search","tag-rubber","tag-transportation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[flickrslideshow acct_name=”spacing” id=”72157625981981811″] __________________ The above images were posted recently by Kathryn Hunt on her Incidental Cyclist blog. Kathryn is an all-season cyclist and in the winter months she often documents the challenges and hazards of staying on two wheels in the slush and the ice. As thaws come and go, by February a newContinue reading "Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Spacing Ottawa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-01T05:05:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-21T14:08:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Evan Thornton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Spacing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Evan Thornton\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/\",\"name\":\"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-03-01T05:05:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-21T14:08:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/a1877b4693b1108ecadcd3f6154a9f23\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/\",\"name\":\"Spacing Ottawa\",\"description\":\"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered | Ottawa Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/a1877b4693b1108ecadcd3f6154a9f23\",\"name\":\"Evan Thornton\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a91f1f27fedabd3a8b4f1a31639e4923?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a91f1f27fedabd3a8b4f1a31639e4923?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Evan Thornton\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/author\/evanthornton\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa","og_description":"[flickrslideshow acct_name=”spacing” id=”72157625981981811″] __________________ The above images were posted recently by Kathryn Hunt on her Incidental Cyclist blog. Kathryn is an all-season cyclist and in the winter months she often documents the challenges and hazards of staying on two wheels in the slush and the ice. As thaws come and go, by February a newContinue reading \"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?\"","og_url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/","og_site_name":"Spacing Ottawa","article_published_time":"2011-03-01T05:05:45+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-01-21T14:08:59+00:00","author":"Evan Thornton","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@Spacing","twitter_site":"@Spacing","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Evan Thornton","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/","name":"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets? - Spacing Ottawa","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-01T05:05:45+00:00","dateModified":"2013-01-21T14:08:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/a1877b4693b1108ecadcd3f6154a9f23"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/01\/bent-rims-and-soaked-pedestrians-is-there-a-better-way-to-drain-our-streets\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bent rims and soaked pedestrians: is there a better way to drain our streets?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#website","url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/","name":"Spacing Ottawa","description":"Canadian Urbanism Uncovered | Ottawa Architecture, Urban Design, Public Transit, City Hall, Parks, Walking, Bikes, Streetscape, History, Waterfront, Maps, Public Spaces","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/a1877b4693b1108ecadcd3f6154a9f23","name":"Evan Thornton","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a91f1f27fedabd3a8b4f1a31639e4923?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a91f1f27fedabd3a8b4f1a31639e4923?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Evan Thornton"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa"],"url":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/author\/evanthornton\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5066"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5137"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9542,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5137\/revisions\/9542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}