Listening to some hot tunes on the bus this morning 🔥

I've got two articles drafted on Vancouver and what Ottawa can learn. However, the nearby city/suburb of Surrey surprised me the most. I've never seen such a strange mix of extreme density and huge parking lots and stroads. Something for Ottawa to avoid as we push to densify!

Findlay Creek on the left: .-big houses.- higher income.- relatively low density and property tax revenues.- buried power lines. Kent Street on the right:.- many apartments.- lower income.- high density and huge property tax revenues.- above ground power lines in some places

Part of Kent Street is up for renewal, and the City of Ottawa is refusing to bury the power lines, saying it’s too expensive. Just Kent Street brings in as much property taxes as the entire West Carleton-March Ward. Our city needs to do a better job of rewarding financially

I am once again posting to inform you that density and nature CAN co-exist.

Next Ottawa Urbanism Book Club will be July 29! . We’ll be discussing Messy Cities: why we can’t plan everything. Copies are available at Perfect Books on Elgin. DM me if interested in attending

Thanks for reading. Why do you think it takes the City of Ottawa forever to get anything done?.

Even Brigil, a developer, wrote recently that they support bus lane on Bank Street. If you support bus lanes as well, please consider emailing your councillor.

If there’s hope, it’s in the community. We sponsored the Marquee at the Mayfair, raising the funds in less than 2 hours. People really want bus lanes on Bank Street.

What’s most concerning is that adding these bus lanes should be easy and quick: .- Street is already 4 lanes.- busiest bus corridor in the city.- bus lanes on Bank have support from the community. We should be fast tracking a project like this.

We delegated against the motion, saying delays had already gone on too long. Sadly there was little discussion on why the study has been so delayed in the first place.

Just few weeks ago the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee voted to (in my opinion) further prolong the study, directing staff to review the traffic impacts of any changes on Bank Street on nearby community streets. The motion passed unanimously.

Private communications have been no better. After CCA sent a letter supporting the lanes, we were told the next consultation group meeting would be in April 2025. 2 months later, that meeting still hasn’t happened.

A wayback machine screenshot from January 2024, showing that the 2nd open house was scheduled for Fall 2024. It’s now been pushed to September 2025. Multiple delays later, the city has publicly appeared to do basically nothing on the issue for a full year.

Sadly, the Bank Street Transit Study has been delayed once again. It’s now over a year behind schedule. 🧵The Bank Street bus lanes delay proves the City of Ottawa can’t even do easy things.

PRESS RELEASE: Community Groups Sponsor Mayfair Marquee to Promote Better Transit. “Bus lanes on Bank street will reduce traffic, improve reliability, and have strong community support. We’re overwhelmed by the community support for better buses on Bank Street.”

The Chinatown Night Market was packed yesterday. There's a huge unmet demand for people first streets in Ottawa.

More Bank bus lanes coverage, this time in the Capital Current. “What has us optimistic is that it wouldn’t cost a lot of money to do this fix . We think that in the long term it would save the City of Ottawa more money as the buses would run more reliably and that could lead to

LET’S GO!!! . “We know OC Transpo has been struggling a lot with reliability and we think this would help get people to work faster, get people home faster, help them get to school on time”. CTV covered our sponsorship of the Mayfair marquee and our push for bus lanes on Bank

We’ve officially taken over the marquee at the Mayfair to promote bus Lanes on Bank Street! . Amazing how much community support we’ve had for better transit