Sympathy for Bronson

(photo yoinked from westsideaction.wordpress.com)

I was going to write a post to say I hate Bronson Avenue. But it’s actually kind of hard to hate it. I don’t like riding on Bronson, no. When I was first in Ottawa, as a college student living across Bronson from Carleton University campus, I developed an unshakeable conviction that one day Bronson would kill me. I remembered that conviction with immediate and crystal clarity, as I was biking down Bronson to a friend’s house last Sunday morning. It’s narrow. It’s fast, and the pavement is so unbelievably bad as to make it almost impassable for a cyclist. There are parked cars at the sides of the street, infrequently enough to be inconvenient. Where there are bike lanes (only around Carleton), they begin and end awkwardly.

But I can’t hate Bronson. Bronson is like the hard-luck cousin of Ottawa streets. The fact that its hashtag on Twitter is not #Bronson but #RescueBronson might give you an idea; the street grinds along through life, rusty, dirty, broken and cracked, the curbs crumbling, the sidewalks sloping and collecting mud, clumps of grass and water, and the asphalt slowly decaying into truly epic potholes. It doesn’t even get the more or less frequent patches that my other high-pothole zone, Main Street, gets. It feels, as you rattle and swerve and swear your way down Bronson, as though everyone has just given up on it as a bad job. Bronson feels unloved. And then there’s the matter of those spooky, garish painted children mounted on utility poles as decoration, in an attempt to create a sense of community among the elderly brick houses, shop fronts and poured-concrete apartment blocks. I tried to hate Bronson; I felt like I’d snapped at a kicked-around dog that was still trying to wag its tail.

But one of these days I will have to ride down Bronson with a camera and get pictures of the appalling state of the pavement.  Last weekend, as I was biking to my friend’s, and home again, I spotted a bunch that would be great candidates for a Gallery of Awful. Some, to use my Pothole Rating System from earlier this year, would count as Intensity 10. At one point a foot-wide, at least 6-inch-deep circular hole had been drilled around some sort of cap – pipes, or something – and left there, in the middle of where bikes need to be. (I came across that one after dark: exciting.)

Around Carleton, as I said, the bike lanes appear and disappear uncomfortably; I come up the ramp from Heron onto Bronson, where there are Transitway lanes, major ramps to major arteries, and where there is no bike lane and you have to be in the far left lane if you want to continue on Bronson and not be forced onto Riverside. After that, it’s a matter of getting past Carleton in a bike lane littered with the sort of high-speed obstacles you might expect – I’ve seen carriage bolts, dead animals, chunks of tire, sheets of rusted metal, and broken glass – and with the occasional off-ramp, like the one onto Colonel By just past the canal, that forces you to figure out when and how to cross a right-turn lane to merge into the suddenly appearing bike lane. But then the bike lanes peter out entirely and you’re on your own through the west end of the Glebe, where the pavement dissolves into defeat.

Underneath the 417 overpass, you dive into a dark tunnel with potholes so frequent and varied you’re forced to run over them, because you can’t be certain the drivers can or will swing out to give you room. Coming up to a light, with cars just to the left of me, I was forced through a pit in the pavement at least three inches deep – there was nowhere to go to avoid it. Avoiding the holes involves putting your head on swivel mode and trying to watch in front and behind at the same time: and sometimes having to hit major holes head on because of a truck rattling past too close for comfort. Arriving at my friend’s house, I was rattled in bone, body and mind, with a thumping headache beginning in my jarred skull and my adrenaline levels spiking. “God,” I said as I gave him a hug, “I hate Bronson."

But I’m sorry, Bronson. It’s not your fault. I didn’t really mean it.

E-bike ban

Here's an interesting one: the NCC is considering banning e-bikes from the multi-use paths. (E-bikes, as I found myself explaining to a friend yesterday, are those little mini-scooters that use an electric motor. I find there's an increasing number of them on the paths, and I've been startled by them more than once, because although they have a motor, they're virtually silent.) Here's the Government of Ontario's FAQ on e-bikes, for a definition.

I can kind of see it. E-bikes fall into this muddy area between motor vehicles and bikes. According to the Highway Traffic Act they are considered "motor assisted bicycles."* They have pedals but no one uses them: well, once I saw a guy pedaling an e-bike, on those teeny-tiny vestigial pedals. I assume the bike had run out of juice. It was a pretty funny thing to watch, I have to admit. I probably would have got off and walked the bike, myself.

They can get up to around 30 kph - the bike paths' ostensible speed limit is 20 - and after a few years of dodging small children, clotheslining dog leashes and/or the dogs themselves on the MUPs, I can see why a speed limit is a good idea. And a small, selfish bit of me thinks, "oh, get a real bike," when one of them zips by on the path or - heaven forfend - on the sidewalk where they really shouldn't be. But I know that bit of my brain is in the wrong. Motor-assisted bikes are great for people that want to bike but for whatever reason can't. Say you have a physical disability or something. They're also great for people that don't want to bike, and don't really feel the need to get their pulse up on their way around town, but also don't want to have a car or burn gas. Valid reasons to have one of these bikes.

But are they motorized or not? That's really at the heart of this, I think. They're too slow to be motorcycles, and they have those little pedals making them 'bicycles,' and so they're a new kind of beast. I also have to say that their sheer silence makes them spooky for me, when trying to share the path with them. I won't hear one coming up behind me to pass, or approaching an intersection, and then woop! there it is.

So, I'm not yet certain what I think about banning them from the paths. They're another green form of transport, which is good, but there's just something about how people think about and use the paths that isn't really compatible with a motorized vehicle. . . yet, what about one of those electric-assist bikes with the generator for climbing hills? would they also be banned? Where's the line?

I'll keep watching. Maybe I'll figure out where I stand as the NCC mulls it over.

*Want the official description? (quoted from the HTA):

“motor assisted bicycle” means a bicycle,

(a) that is fitted with pedals that are operable at all times to propel the bicycle,

(b) that weighs not more than fifty-five kilograms,

(c) that has no hand or foot operated clutch or gearbox driven by the motor and transferring power to the driven wheel,

(d) that has an attached motor driven by electricity or having a piston displacement of not more than fifty cubic centimetres, and

(e) that does not have sufficient power to enable the bicycle to attain a speed greater than 50 kilometres per hour on level ground within a distance of 2 kilometres from a standing start.

Capital VeloFest

This is new! Just spotted a link to this - Capital VéloFest: a bicycle festival for Ottawa. Seems brand new (incorporated only last March.) They've got a mini-festival on June 4th (a 'bicycle rodeo' and night ride on closed streets) as well as (starting this month) a Vélo Rally which will post instructions for riding along bike routes through the city, with questions to find the answers to along the way. Looks kind of like a bike scavenger hunt. And it also looks like they're planning ride-in movies - like Centretown Movies does outdoor movies, but with the encouragement to ride your bike to the location.

Okay. I have *got* to do one of the bike rallies just to see how it goes. I'll let you know as soon as they post a route! And check out the site or hook up with @CapitalVeloFest on Twitter to keep up with what they're doing!

All in the Wrong

Sometimes - maybe because I read too many comments on news articles - I make a mistake (miss the yellow light and wind up accidentally running the red; wind up in the wrong lane; go at the wrong time at a stop sign) and I imagine the drivers around me thinking the sorts of things I see in the comments: "cyclists are out of control," "they're a danger to themselves and others," "why are these crazy cyclists allowed on the roads when they just disregard the rules," etc., etc., etc.

It drives me nuts to think that, because most of the time I'm pretty obsessively conscious of sharing the road. And because I hate reinforcing anyone's misguided stereotypes.

So what happened was this: I was heading to a friend's. I was tired, and shaking off the last of a cold, and maybe a little less alert than I could have been. I wound up at an intersection where I needed to turn left. You might know the intersection - at Bank and Kitchener.

So I pulled up at the red light, facing Bank Street. Across from me was the entrance to the parking lots of the LCBO (right) and Home Depot (left). But it gets a traffic light because people can continue straight through from Kitchener into the parking lots. There's a left turn lane on Kitchener, which I was in. But when the light turned green there was a car facing me, with turning signal on indicating the driver was turning left. I was also turning left. But I guess I have been in too many situations where a car facing me, when we're both turning left, has been visibly freaked out by not knowing what I'm going to do, so I hesitated before heading into the left turn, not able to figure out why the other car wasn't moving. Then saw the driver was waiting for a pedestrian to cross the road.

Then a car behind me honked, and pulled out to pass me, on the right side, although he'd been behind me in the left turn lane. So I turned to try and figure out which way he was going to go - worried that he was going to try and make the left turn around me, and possibly into me - and he pulled out, turning right onto Bank across the through/right turn lane, while a delivery truck behind him took the opportunity to pull past me on the other side and turn left, pausing long enough to yell something out the door of his truck that sounded to me like "... mumble something going straight something something cut off..."

Helpful, buddy.

I shouted, "He's turning! I was waiting! I'm turning left!" but by then he had driven off, having illegally passed me and cut me off for the turn, and the other driver having illegally passed me and cut across a lane to turn right.

I realize that in fact, if the car facing me was turning left, then what I was supposed to do was just continue with my turn. But since I didn't know what he was going to think of a bike heading into the intersection toward him, and because I was a little fuzzy-headed with a cold, and I momentarily forgot what my right of way was, I hesitated. Then the drivers behind me honked, fumed, and each did their own version of 'the wrong thing' to get around me - which they would not have done had I been in a car, hesitating in the left turn lane.

And I'm now bothered by the fact that I may have been taken for a 'stupid cyclist who doesn't know the rules.' Yup, I had a momentary brain fart. Sure, we were all wrong. But the end result of the whole incident was that my moment of insecurity was made infinitely more dangerous by the reactions of the drivers around me.

It's things like this that make me hate left turns with a burning firey passion.

Ride of Silence

I just spotted this listing in Culture Magazine, thought I'd repost here as an FYI. Not sure if I'll be able to make it but I'll report if I do. 

Ride of Silence - Gatineau
Date: May 18, 2011  Time: meet at 6:30 pm
Location: Maison du Citoyen, 25 rue Laurier, Gatineau (Hull sector)
This annual event started in 2003 in Texas in memory of cyclists injured or killed on the road.  The ride now takes place in over 320 cities worldwide on the third Wednesday of May.

The Ride of Silence is like a funeral procession. We will be riding  at around 15 km/h. No talking is allowed, as silence is how we can remember our deceased sisters and brothers. Black arm bands will be worn in memory of the deceased, and a red arm band will be worn for those injured or intimidated by motorists. A bicycle helmet is mandatory, and red and white flashing lights are a good idea to be seen.

We also take this opportunity to raise the drivers' awareness that we are here.

For more information consult website:  http://tourdusilencegatineau.com/RoS/

Ride of Silence main page

So how much do you know, really?

I just took a quick skim through Transports Quebec's cycling site. Partly because I'm working on a piece about cycling and traffic laws (which are, basically, provincial, so the rules change a bit when you cross the border.)

I'm actually rather impressed by Quebec's cycling policy: check out their site and have a gander for yourself. But what entertained me most was their set of quizzes. You can go through them (four questions each, I think) and pick your answers, get a score, and if you get one or two wrong (which I'm willing to bet you might) it will tell you how many are wrong, but not which questions, so you have to rethink your answers and try again. I learned some things!

Check it out for yourself. I bet you learn stuff.

Bike lanes for Wellington!

Sure, I bike on Wellington downtown. I don't *like* it. It's not fun to ride along a street with your knuckles whitening on the handlebars. Your hands fall asleep from all the tension and the adrenaline gets you all jittery. But I do ride down Wellington. I'm not at all surprised, though, when people ride on the sidewalks. For one thing, if you're trying to get anywhere other than just straight along Wellington - if you want to turn off the street anywhere between the Rideau Mall and, say, Lebreton Flats - then may the Force be with you. There are so many weird intersections, oddly spaced lights, double turn lanes and nasty leftward merges that I tend to give up and use pedestrian crosswalks. And even if you're just going east or west down the street, you're dodging buses (lots of them, OC Transpo and STO alike), taxis, and cars. Oh, and the buses are weaving in and out of the far right curb - you can't really pass them on the left or the right without running serious risk. No wonder people are on the (wide, spacious, built-for-postcard-pictures) sidewalks.

And if you want to get through that part of town on the riverside multi-user-path ... well, may the Force be with you then too. I've never managed to find my way through the maze of paths that run alongside the river without sooner or later winding up stranded, somewhere near the War Museum, on a sidewalk, with no clue where the next bit of the path picks up.

So when I heard about the NCC's plans for a segregated bike lane on Wellington, down near the Library and Archives, a few weeks ago, I was pretty happy. And it's all official and stuff now - it's on the news! I'm particularly heartened by the comment from Richard Daigneault, the NCC's project manager for the lane: "Up to date, we've always worked on pathways, more the recreational end of things. But now it's a matter of how to connect this network into the city."

Yes, yes, and yes. Yay.