The idea of a road diet for Bronson is generating lots of interest around the city. Here’s a story from today’s Ottawa Sun story by Scott Taylor: http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2010/11/07/16021031.html:
“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, a community activist says, to do a makeover on Bronson Ave. that will appeal to motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.
With the city planning to completely rebuild the major artery next spring, the time will never be better to beautify it. The problem Eric Darwin sees, though, is that nobody is really listening.
“You take streets like Preston. It used to be four lanes and now it’s two and it’s gorgeous. It handles exactly the same amount of traffic volume as before. ”
Darwin, who is the president of the Dalhousie Association, said two other community associations and Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes are on board.
Darwin claims the city’s original plan was to widen the street by two feet on either side by narrowing the sidewalks in half.
“We made a big stink about this and asked what happened to their mandate that said they look at pedestrians and cyclists and transit. They just hadn’t considered that there would actually be people there who didn’t want the street widened.”
Thus far, the two sides have met twice, but still don’t see eye to eye. Darwin said the city did hire a landscape architect for the second meeting, but her vision left much to be desired.
“They want to put pedestrian lighting in and every second pedestrian lamp post was supposed to have this fake tree branch on the top with big, green banana leaves made out of metal. What if they rust? If it snows on them, aren’t they just going to drip for hours on the sidewalk?”
He’s pushing for three lanes — one for each direction and a middle left turn lane for traffic in both directions and plans to convert more people with a public meeting Wednesday at the McNabb Community Centre at 7 p.m.
“All we ask them is to do it smarter.”
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In addition to the Sun story, CKCU did a ten minute live interview with a local neighborhood rabble rouser Monday morning at 8.10, and CKCU is doing a bit on Bronson on the noon Wedn. radio show.
Gotta run now: TV interview on the street, at 10am.
Thank you for your efforts in this!
Ken Gray is, as usual, spouting off against any ideas on Bronson. It’s funny, he recognizes it’s been a problem for years now, but when anybody tries to do anything about it, he steps all over them.
Bronson Avenue: Another Lansdowne Park?
He’s not “spouting off against any ideas on Bronson” nor is he stepping all over anyone who tries to do anything about it. He simply doubts that any attempt to make Bronson better will actually succeed. Eric’s up against people who came up with the idea to widen Bronson’s lanes by narrowing its sidewalks. They were not even satisfied with the status quo – they actually want to make things worse. That’s quite a hill to climb to get them to come round to making things better. It’s not hard to envision Ken being correct in his assessment of the situation.