Strong Towns Ottawa

This option would seek to put even more fast moving vehicle lanes on a street that would be ruined by more car traffic. With lanes where cars can pass each other we will see more speeding, leading to an increase in noise and most importantly danger for everyone using Bank, especially pedestrians. Given that Bank is such a vital location for pedestrians this would lead to a much less pleasant experience. It also wouldn’t solve any traffic issues as we know that more car lanes do not fix our traffic problems, also known as Induced Demand (here is a great short video explaining it).

We’ve already mentioned this option previously, but to sum it up, only having bus lanes during small sections of the day leads to confusion, and tickets, for drivers. Many studies also show that temporary bus lanes gain none of the advantage of full-time bus lanes as there are too often cars remaining parked in the lanes, this ends up leading to none of the benefits you’d expect from bus lanes. The option also removes bus lanes during the most important time we’d need them, which is during large Lansdowne events. Public transportation is the only way to move large groups of people to a specific location. Not having a bus lane during those hours will lead to much more congestion during events. By providing good public transportation options you incentivize people to leave their cars at home, and thus help alleviate the need for parking as well.

During off-peak hours we know that the alternative parking options (Lansdowne, 2nd Avenue Garage, nearby streets, etc…) have plenty of capacity to handle parking, so there is no reason to try to turn the lanes back to parking lanes during off-peak hours.

Given how little parking is already on-street as is (less than 7% of the total parking) it doesn’t make sense to give up a whole lane in an option just to seek to keep 71 parking spots along a 2km stretch of road. This option also removes bus lanes during Lansdowne events, just like Option B, which is a huge missed opportunity and will lead to more congestion during events. The parking will lead to the same issues we currently see on Bank which leads to lots of long backups and is the primary reason we have so much congestion in the first place. Similar to Option B, having only temporary bus lanes will lead to losing almost all of the benefits we’d expect with dedicated transit lanes as cars will be left in the space during the hours where they aren’t allowed.

Cycling lanes wouldn’t be a terrible alternative option to 24/7 bus lanes. Many studies show that businesses see huge improvements when bike lanes are put into the streets those businesses are on. There is still no reason to keep half of the less than 7% on-street parking in this option, this extra space could be used for wider pedestrian facilities and wider bike lanes (1.5m is the bare minimum and doesn’t allow for safe passing), this would lead to a much more pleasant experience on the street for shoppers. Bike lanes would help calm the street, reduce noise, and help protect cyclists, all great improvements! Overall this is one of the less bad options the city has chosen, but given the other options of calmer streets nearby we think that Bank should rather prioritize public transportation as one of our main N-S corridors in the city, especially with the importance of moving large amounts of people to events with public transportation.

Finally we get to our option. Not too different from what is already there, except that we have created permanent 24/7 bus lanes instead of only during a couple hours of the day. The reason this is preferred has been gone into before, but one of the main reasons behind 24/7 is that it allows us to actually get the benefits of dedicated transit lanes and help speed up buses going through the area. Temporary lanes lead to confusion and cars being left in the bus lanes when they shouldn’t be. We don’t want to punish people for mistakes, so we should build a system that minimizes chances of those mistakes.

The 24/7 bus lanes can also be used as a bike lane as there will be times when they are empty, and a moderate speed on a bike can typically stay ahead of a bus that has to stop at most of the spots along the street. This in turn gives us the added benefit of essentially adding a bike lane without having to give up transit dedicated lanes.

24/7 bus lanes will make sure that during events we are allowing for the most efficient form of transportation to move the most people to and from Lansdowne without delays. This will help incentivize public transit, and help boost ridership numbers, while reducing congestion in the area.

Moving the parking off of the street will also help make Bank safer. Visibility around intersections will be greater which will allow for safer pedestrian crossing, make it safer for cars turning onto Bank, as well as remove dooring interactions between bikers and cars.

Overall the 24/7 Bus Lanes have tons of benefits, and the only “downside” would be that we lose less than 7% of the parking in the area. Second Avenue Garage has as many parking spots as the whole section of Bank Street from the Highway to Lansdowne, and is less than a 10 minute walk to every shop along this section of Bank Street, it is a no brainer that the parking should be moved to the alternative options that are currently under-used.