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On January 26th the two competing bits for the redevelopment of the Lebreton Flats area of Ottawa finally revealed their proposals. Both groups have plans for extensive retail, residential, and green space, as well as an arena. The mention of an arena in both proposals is a surprise as while the “Rendez Vous LeBreton Group” is affiliated with the Ottawa Senators current ownership the competing “DCDLS Group” has no affiliation with the team or its owners. Riders have a wide variety of options to choose from when it comes to paying to use OCTranspo. These options include cash, tickets, and the presto card. Each offers of these three options offer riders different ways to pay for their transit use. Unfortunately there is one powerful option that is missing from the system which would make Presto a nearly unbeatable way to pay for public transit.
Cash and ticket options have been available to riders for many years, where as Presto is a relatively new and untested way to pay for rides on OCTranspo. Few things are more infuriating to see than a new or well paved road being torn up and improperly repaired. Unfortunately this tends to happen quite frequently where new houses are built in the place of older existing ones.
These repair jobs are often done with little regard for the longevity and quality of the fix, or any consideration for what it’s like to drive on. Many of these excavations are just filled with gravel and then covered in a thin veneer of tar. The Taxi system in many large cities in North America is broken. Unfortunately Ottawa is among these. Through the historical over-reliance on regulation as means to create a safe, quality, and consistent experience, Ottawa has managed to create the very climate they set out to avoid.
Only with the recent entrance of Uber’s taxi service into the Ottawa market has any meaningful debate about the quality, price, and structure of Ottawa’s sub-par taxi system been highlighted. With many in Canada looking for ways to stay active and keep cool during the surprisingly hot summer, sailing fills that roll for many. Sailing schools across the country run programs for children as young as 6, all the way up to teenagers on the race team, many who look forward to taking part on a variety of regattas both at their home club and across the country.
Unfortunately, the sense of competition, sportsmanship, and fun being fostered by sailing schools does’t always carry over to events at the national level. Over the past month, while trying to purchase a variety of obscure items (security nuts and marine VHF cable connectors) I experienced for the first time the outdated nature of many small businesses on the internet.
While the likes of Amazon and The Source have an extensive online presence, where browsing and purchasing their products is a breeze, there are thousands of other, mainly smaller businesses that have little to no online presence. While many in Ottawa are fixated on the failed pedestrian bridge project over the Airport Parkway, they tend to forget about the parkways other serious issues, such as it being one lane for much of its length, the lack of highway access, and the roads use as a commuter thoroughfare.
The Airport Parkway, as its name might suggest, was intended to be used to access the Ottawa International Airport. And while there are other issues with layout of the road (which I will get to), the main problem is congestion during rush hour. With the expiry of my U-pass in May I have begun to use my Presto card for the first time since it’s launch. Thankfully, while there are a few minor issues I have found with Presto, I have only one major concern: payment options.
When I went to register and setup my Presto card I was presented with three different payment option: manual top-up, Monthly Pass, and Autoload, none of which seemed to my liking. In the past 20 years the population of Ottawa has increased at an explosive rate. In those days Kanata, Orleans, and Barrhaven were just small collections of houses tucked away outside the greenbelt. Today those areas are huge sprawling suburban neighbourhoods which have shown some of the fastest growth in the city. With new expansions being added every day these areas are indicative of the urban sprawl problems faced in Ottawa and many other cities. As the development of the Ottawa Light Rail network continues the transit commission continues to make decisions about details of the Confederation Line. One of these decisions is the renaming of the LeBreton Transitway Station to Pimisi Station. This name, meaning eel in Algonquin, is supposed to pay tribute to the Algonquin tribe who once inhabited the area and relied on the now endangered eel for sustenance.
Unfortunately the name Pimisi is a terrible idea on the part of the city transit commission for many reasons, none of which are considered when guilt-driven pity decisions are made by governmental organization in Canada on issues relating to native Indians. OC Transpo, the public transit service for the city of Ottawa, has one of the largest fleets of buses in North America with over 1000 buses on over 130 routes. The following is an overview of my advice on seating for a selection of the buses operated by OC Transpo.
This guide is written primarily for the average able-bodies bus rider as there is very little available about the regular seating on OC Transpo buses. On June 13th the City of Ottawa released an update to the Ottawa Western (Light Rail Transit) LRT plan. This update was meant to address the concerns of local Westboro residents (with opinions voiced mainly by those living along Skead St.) who complained that the original plan (to have the LRT in a semi-submersed trench, hidden by a berm, between Skead St. and the parkway) hindered visibility of, and access to, the parkway and river front.