{"id":7358,"date":"2011-12-01T14:31:04","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T19:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=7358"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:22:34","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:22:34","slug":"the-cycling-lansdowne-situation-in-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/12\/01\/the-cycling-lansdowne-situation-in-short\/","title":{"rendered":"The cycling Lansdowne situation, in short."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Over the last week, on my own blog I’ve been writing about details of the cycling aspect of the Lansdowne transportation plans.<\/a> Those five articles are all pretty deep; this one will summarize the situation. This is all relevant for tonight’s open house on the topic<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Lansdowne Park stadium in Ottawa is scheduled to be reconstructed over the next few years. The location in the Glebe, just south of downtown, makes it impossible to build new transportation infrastructure, yet the commercial success of the park depends on there being a lot more people visiting. To add to the problems, the local roads and parking are already clogged, particularly on Bank St.<\/p>\n

My focus is on the biking aspects. Cycling is an important part of the transportation plan as it offsets other expensive types (driving, transit).<\/p>\n

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Comparison of three other cities' city bike modal share and stadium modal share.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s an expectation that for larger events (like 10,000 people attending 67s hockey games, or 24,000 people to CFL games), they’ll get 2-3% bicycle ridership. This is well beyond the stats for any other North American stadium I can find<\/a>. To get numbers like these, they’ll need to sell cycling to the audience.<\/p>\n

The plans changed<\/h2>\n

It is hard not to feel like there’s a sales job going on when you read the plans over the last few years. The target isn’t only the local community (“really, you’ll be able to have visitors and drive home no problem”), but also to the prospective tenants (“you’ll have no problem getting to your businesses”). Over time, the planning’s gotten a bit more specific, and the plan seems less believable.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example of how it has changed. The one really great bicycle connection we have is the National Capital Commission’s multi-use pathway along the Rideau Canal, except to get to the park from there, one needs to cross Queen Elizabeth Drive, which will be even busier on game days.<\/p>\n

Back in the early days, city council passed a motion that says this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Minutes from the June 17, 2011 motion.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That new intersection is included in a couple of maps in the plans from 2010. In any of the plans in 2011, the intersection’s been removed from the maps, and they just chose not to deal with the problem. They did include instead the use of an existing path on the wrong side of QED,<\/a> and it is easy to miss that this path actually goes nowhere. In other NCC documents, it is clear the city’s never talked to them about this intersection.<\/a><\/p>\n

They’ve also removed most of the planned cycling entrances and exits to the park.<\/p>\n

Actually, there’s now no off-site improvements in the plan. Cyclists are just expected to show up.<\/p>\n

Obstacles to cyclists<\/h2>\n

There are some obstacles to convincing cyclists from choosing to bike:<\/p>\n