Hmm, is this mop-haired, pouty-lipped hunk with the exposed nipple really giving out city maps? Well, sort of. It’s a edisplay billboard, and once the camera pans down the hot bod fellow you discover Adonis is advertising boots or something … Continue reading Urban Detail (xiii) Urban wayfinding, signage
It’s difficult to remember when our local mainstreets weren’t populated by cannabis stores every second block. It’s even more difficult to remember the short period when these stores were actually open for business. Now they just promise cannabis but aren’t … Continue reading Urban Detail (x) Cannabis Retailing, legal or not
The Clichy-Batignolles plan is highly dependent on the stacking of different uses along its western edge, facing the St Lazare railway tracks, where a track level podium base holds locomotive workshops, with parking above, with offices and apartments above that. … Continue reading Clichy-Batignolles, Paris, rue Cardinet
The City recently announced some more OC Transpo route changes. Most significantly to readers here at WestSideAction, “local” bus services from the west side will no longer travel right through the downtown; nor will east side bus services travel through … Continue reading Short Cuts at OCTranspo
With the increasing popularity of vehicular homicide as a form of political expression, our public spaces have become less welcoming, forever. Which is of course how terrorists and political extremists win. Fortunately, the public memory is short, and decorative planters, … Continue reading Protect me from motorists? terrorists? whomever !
This is part iii of a series on downtown bus routes once the Confederation Line opens in 2018. Part i was on STO routes. Part ii was aimed at understanding what OC Transpo is trying to achieve with the new bus … Continue reading OC Transpo bus routes in the downtown, 2018 version
So, having seen in Part i, what is planned (subject to change) for STO buses in downtown Ottawa once the Confederation Line LRT opens in or around August 2018 … let’s look at the OC Transpo routes. These OC Transpo … Continue reading Buses in the downtown in LRT era, part ii, OC Transpo
There seems to be a lot of interest amongst readers about the routes for STO buses and the volume of buses, once the new Confederation Line opens next year. The situation is still in flux, so the maps below are … Continue reading Buses in downtown Ottawa in the LRT era, part i, STO
The City is hosting an “open house” on Tuesday (Nov 28, 5.30pm onwards ) to show their plans for the future Albert and Slater Streets between Empress (the Good Companions) and Waller (Rideau Centre, UOttawa U). Here are some things … Continue reading West Side Transportation Cornucopia, part viii – Albert-Slater alert
When the Ottawa Humane Society left Champagne Avenue there was some sort of contractual agreement they had to offer the land to the city. For parkland. Nothing said the city had to buy it. So they didn’t. And as a … Continue reading City sleeps while mystery bridge decays
Down in the Big Apple, the City has completed the pedestrianization of the southern half of Times Square 2.0. The more famous northern half was already done and got world wide publicity. Predictions of carmageddon, as usual, did not materialize. … Continue reading Ottawa Thinking gives us Elgin 1.2
What is invading downtown sidewalks and snatching away space, replacing it with stainless steel boxes? Are any pedestrians safe? Are pedestrians and street beggars (err, sidewalk entrepreneurs) safe or will they be captured by some unknown power and put into a stainless … Continue reading Invasion of the Sidewalk Snatchers
ALT seems to be a trendy new word. Here’s how it applies in downtown Ottawa. We now have an Alt sidewalk. Go on, go walk on it today. The Alt Hotel occupies part of condo building on Slater. The building … Continue reading The Alt Sidewalk Design
I went to a public talk the other evening. It was soooo depressing. The speaker is an architect and town planner. And professor. And consultant. And urban design reviewer. The secret to better cities? Hire more architects. Not just any … Continue reading Depressing evening with an Architect.
There is still more to be gleaned from the City’s revealled plans for the reconstruction of Queen Street. What’s in it for cyclists? Queen will not have much in the way of specific cycling infrastructure — no bike lanes, no bike … Continue reading Queen Street wrap-up : for cyclists
The raison d’etre for the Queen Street reconstruction and streetscaping is to enlarge the sidewalks enough to carry all the people walking to and from the new subway entrances. All the entrances are on one street, the originally planned ones on other streets were value engineered out of existence. That there is some access from other streets is strictly courtesy of private-property access: through the Clarica Buildings lobby from Albert Street, or the underground concourse at Place de Ville (but not 240 Sparks or Constitution Square or Minto Place). A principle Lyon Station entrance is through the Podium Building, shown below. The … Continue reading Queen Street wrap-up : for people who walk
Every time there is a new Liberal government in Ottawa, VIA Rail appears, exactly on schedule, to promote spending money investing on a dedicated passenger rail network in The Corridor (Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City, or some subset thereof). While the “solution” is always … Continue reading VIA Rail, Climate Change, and Naiomi on a streetcar
Both submissions to rebuild the last portion of LeBreton Flats include sport arenas, and I expect both will include a new central library. This is both for marketing purposes, ie broadening the appeal of the project to cover both stereotypical … Continue reading LeBetter Flats countown (iii) – libraries and “culture”
So, the CBC this morning was featuring another story on our lack of public washrooms. So I thought it worthwhile reprinting this Feb.2015 story about public toilets. I think the potty solution from Portland would fit very nicely in Dundonald Park. As a society, we have a major aversion to acknowledging that people gotta go pee. Or poo. And that this happens when people are outside of the home. Like at transit stations. Or touristing in a city. In lieu of public WC signage, we are reduced to looking for the Golden Arches of M, where there is always a … Continue reading Gotta go pee ! (again)
An interesting demonstration of evolving design came to west siders this week courtesy of our high rise developers. Better design is everywhere these days. For that we can credit the popularity of industrial design schools, increased awareness of graphic design elements, and the popularity of design-centric programs on TV and the ‘net. Now we can see it on our skyline by craning our necks. Up on Cathedral Hill, Windmill developments installed their crane for their new condo tower. It is the conventional design. Dare we call it the ‘old fashioned’ design? Notice the complicated support wires, the heavy concrete block … Continue reading Spring Craning
The new Confederation LRT line stations for downtown Ottawa — as proposed by the winning consortium — are very different from the previous designs worked out by the City. The City’s previous designs were very big on safety through environmental design. To that end, the downtown tunnel stations had a upper level mezzanine with the ticketing functions, that was then open to the track level one floor below. In quiet hours, someone on the mezzanine could eyeball the trackside waiting areas. People waiting on the platforms could be confident that someone could see them easily from the mezzanine. All that … Continue reading Confederation matters (i)
It’s easy to make excuses why sidewalks so often don’t meet pedestrians’ basic needs. And sometimes there are genuine instances of “falling between the gaps” Like this one Here the view westwards, along Lisgar: .Do you see it? Try this view, looking eastwards on the same sidewalk: In the foreground of pic two is Hudson Park, condo by Charlesfort. It has a wider-than-normal sidewalk, about 6′ instead of the regulated 5′. Which is good, because the walk is busy. The brick condo is by Domicile. The Domicile condo widened the walk in front of their building with cobbles and a … Continue reading Playing Pedestrian in the Middle
Cyclists on the Laurier separated bike lane (SBL) should have noticed some discrete trenching going on in the lane. Apparently using a saw blade, a narrow trench is being cut along the curb that separates the lane from other traffic: The work is being done at night, so trench itself constitutes the evidence. Every so often, there is another cut at right angles, going towards an adjacent building. To keep debris out of the trench until the cables can be installed, a plastic cap is put on: The fibre optics cable that is being installed by Globility (Primus) and they have pretty much finished their work on Laurier … Continue reading Digging up the Laurier SBL
Vancouver has been “enjoying” a condo tower boom for some years. Early on in the boom, the demand for condos was so hot that existing office buildings were converted to condos. For example, the iconic BC Hydro building (the highrise with no ground floor) was converted. Critics began to speculate that residences would drive commercial uses right off the prime peninsula space, an interesting reversal of the usual community activist nightmare of expanding commercial uses driving out the residential uses around the core. Apartment towers differ from townhouse developments in Barrhaven and Riverside South in that the towers stick up in … Continue reading When condos replace offices …
The Citizen reports today * that the City and Carleton U are monitoring cyclist and motorist behaviour along the Laurier separated bike lane (SBL). They are using video equipment to record behaviour of individual users and interactions amongst users. The citizen story doesn’t tell us HOW they are doing this, or give us the larger picture. Here is a photo overview of one video camera installation. The camera set up was used to record 100 hours of the intersection, then moved to the next, til all 8 Laurier intersections were monitored. (above): the recording device consists of some equipment boxes at the base, a … Continue reading The City is monitoring much more than cycle traffic on Laurier
