The Preston Street BIA is turning to crowd-sourcing to identify what people want to see on their local main street. Then the BIA plans to go searching for those merchants to point out there is a demand for their services on the street. Who knows, it just might work — it has elsewhere! Continue reading What stores turn you on?
Volunteers work to build a play structure in Dalhousie at a housing project. Volunteers came from China and Ottawa. Many hands make … play. Continue reading Community Building is Play
Occasionally the City does make the pedestrian sidewalk more pleasant for pedestrians, but this is far from common. Sometimes the city uses planters to separate speeding traffic from peds. These work really well. Continue reading Making sidewalks safer
The huge Chinatown Royal Arch on Somerset Street is being decorated with real gold foil by Chinese artisans. The finished results are stunning, and the process itself is well worth a look. Continue reading Chinatown Arch being foiled …
The City is reusing about 12% of its retireing parking meter posts as bike posts Continue reading Bike Post on Somerset
Transportation Committee approved construction of the Otrain corridor bike path for 2011-12. The path runs from the Ottawa River at the Prince of Wales bridge, south to Carling Avenue and Dows Lake. Continue reading Transportation Committee approves Otrain corridor bike path
Today the MSM breaks the story of the Our Lady of the Condos site development that you read about here, last week. Continue reading Our Lady of the Condos attracts attention of MSM
The city’s advice to pedestrians is awful, it verges on harassment. Read the rant to find out why. Continue reading Pedestrian Harassment
Signs proliferate in Ottawa: how to wash your hands, how to drink from a fountain … Continue reading Signs, signs, everywhere you go
That we have to hire people and machinery to mow the canal is another good reason to reduce run off. Continue reading Honey, go mow the water
The Our Lady of the Condos project by Ashcroft on Richmond Road was controversial when revealled in the spring of this year. There has been very little coverage of the results of the review panel, which tinker with the site but don’t reduce the density. Continue reading Our Lady of the Condos revisited
The city has set up a stakeholders group to contribute to its process of finding how the LRT will get from Bayview (or Tunney’s) to Lincoln Fields. Options include the Ottawa River NCC lands, the Otrain-Carling route, the Churchill-Carling route, and the transitway-Byron route. All options have very different features for transit users and the adjacent communities. Continue reading Western Leg, LRT (from Bayview to Lincoln Fields via ???)
Example of well-designed functional urban fountain that meets a whole variety of user needs. Continue reading Simple fountain
Logging used to be such a major industry in Ottawa-Gatineau. This historic boat is parked on the Gatineau-side shoreline. Continue reading Wet History
The perseid meteor shower comes every year. This year, it will peak on Thursday night. Start watching after 10pm. Peak viewing will be midnight to 1am (ie midnight thursday evening to 1am friday morning) as the moon will be absent. If you can make out lots of stars in the sky, it is dark enough. Even though I live downtown, I can lie out on my back deck and find it is dark enough. I hang some blankets on the clothesline to block street light shining from the next block. Last year, we saw about 10 meteors quite clearly in about … Continue reading Perseid Meteor Shower Thursday nite
The new condos on LeBreton Flats are showing more signs of life. About 120 units are occupied, 175 more will become available on Feb 1, 2011. There is now balcony furniture, babies, and pedestrian activity. Years of construction are ahead. Continue reading Building a community ?
The Preston Street BIA continues to add features to the attractive Preston streetscape. One of the most challenging areas is under the Queensway.The BIA has managed to turn theirs into a silk purse. Continue reading All roads lead to Rome
CBC newsclip on the ridiculous transitway backups last week. Continue reading CBC Newsclip available
For the first time I noticed the new bike locking rings and posts. Too few posts are being converted to bike locking posts. I am alarmed by the City’s choice of very high standards for where to locate the posts. It means we won’t get nearly enough of them. Continue reading Bike parking posts
All the proposals for the Fallen Firefighters Memorial at the NCC presentation last evening had very similar elements and wording. I suspect they reflect the rigid programming requirments edicted by the bureaucrats. The closest the proposals came to excitement also came with the most criticism, if the public comment sheet is anything to go by. The proposals all lack something to engage the public. The memorial site will truly be a dead spot. Continue reading Dead Spot
More on transit congestion in downtown Ottawa, our city’s inadequate response, and media coverage. Yesterday, I suggested a tunnel / grade-separation is required to prevent these confidence-sapping snafu’s from repeating endlessly. Continue reading Idiot Proof
Ottawa skeptics doubt that we need a downtown transit tunnel. They focus too much on the initial capital cost of the tunnel. A better comparison is to alternative ways to run transit through downtown Ottawa for the next century. Continue reading Tunnel please, no shades of gray
If you get this message, you are still subscribed to or are reading WestSideAction at the OLD blog site. There is a new post at the new site, and it will not appear at this site! You are missing my post on why we need a downtown transit tunnel, no shades of Gray! Here’s what to do:Go to http://www.westsideaction.wordpress.com/ and on the right side column, the RSS buttons. Click to start your free subscription for the posts only, or the posts and readers comments. If you subscribe, all new posts are sent to you automatically. Once you subscribe to the … Continue reading You missed the latest post …
WestSideAction has moved from .blogspot to .wordpress. Please subscribe using the RSS button as future posts will be from the .wordpress site only. Continue reading WSA is moving …
WestSideAction has moved from .blogspot to .wordpress. Please subscribe using the RSS button there as future posts will be from the http://www.westsideaction.wordpress.com/ site only. Sorry for the errors and omissions and oddities that appear for the next few days as I try to set up and get familiar with the .wordpress account. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. thanks for reading, Eric Darwin Continue reading WSA is moving
