Gatineau Park Transportation Plan
 

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/07/21/ottawa-gatineau-park-transit-cars.html

NCC hopes transit can cut traffic in Gatineau Park
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 6:45 PM ET Comments10Recommend10
CBC News

Soon, fewer visitors might be travelling through Gatineau Park with their car windows down and their stereos turned up — the National Capital Commission is working on a transit plan it hopes will slash the number of cars that drive to and through the park.

Park director Marie Boulet said giving visitors transit alternatives would be good for the heavily used green space.

"It is not uncommon that we have real traffic congestion in the park," she said. "We're concerned with the impact motor vehicles can have on the park environment. But also on the recreational experience in the park."

Boulet said the NCC is currently gathering data in order to come up with alternatives to cars, which could include building transit links inside the park.

Chad Nelson, who drove to visit the park with a canoe strapped on top of his van, said that for hikers, reducing parking delays would improve the experience.

"I know the lineups are crazy around Pink Lake, going to a beautiful lookout," he said. "It is crazy to have nature traffic jams like they have in American parks."

Alex Procter, another park user, however, said convincing people to change their ways might be difficult.

"Considering how many locations people are coming from that come here, and the different time schedules," he said, giving up the freedom a car offers might be hard for some visitors.

Officials with the NCC said they would consult with the public before finalizing their new transportation plan, which they hope to unveil by the spring of 2011.

Thoughts, ideas about this?

I cycle there semi-regularly and there's been a fair bit of controversy this year with the RCMP enforcing the single-file riding rules of the Quebec Highway Code. There seems to be a widespread belief that single-file is somehow safer than double-file but in fact all that single-file does is allow/encourage unsafe passing, and with large groups that becomes a greater issue.

It does get busy at times but it's not just the volume of traffic but its speed as well. Car drivers seem to think they have to drive the speed limit or better... but it's a parkway - slow down and enjoy the drive.

Some tour buses already go up there, especially in the autumn. Tour bus drivers seem to be more relaxed on average than motorists - they're out there to give their passengers a show, not an ascent record.


As to transit ideas, the reactions on the CBC page are telling - can't pack the kids into a bus for a picnic. Or canoes or skis. I've seen skis and snowboards put into municipal buses in Whistler, so it's doable, but it was also a bit nightmarish too. The buses would definitely have to be fitted out for such a thing but I'm not sure that the winter is when the problem exists either.

I can see that this is going to be one tough nut of a problem to crack.

This is such a typical NCC plan - doing whatever is necessary to prevent people from making sensible use of the greenspaces under their stewardship.

You can walk your dog along the Ottawa River pathway, but letting your dog have a refreshing swim in the water is prohibited. Why? Who is this harming?

Likewise, it makes no sense to force Gatineau Park users to bring their kids/dogs/bikes/skis/beach toys/strollers/snowshoes/canoes/etc to the park by bus. And a bus that runs on a fixed schedule at that. Can you imagine what the line-up at the bus stop would look like? Consider also that people use the park at all times of day and night (ever been on a moonlight cross-country ski tour?). Do you really think that there will be a bus waiting to drive you back to the city at 1am?

Yes, cyclists do cause headaches and back-ups on the roads in the park, but it's not their fault. There aren't even any shoulders on the roads to move over onto if a car needs to pass.

If the NCC wants to ease congestion on the roads of Gatineau Park, it should put in dedicated bike lanes and improve the parking situation. These are no-brainers.

The provision of a bus service, while still allowing private vehicle traffic, is OK. But it will only attract ridership from those people who have no other way to get to the park. It probably wouldn't even pay for itself.

Something needs to be done during busy times. The last time I went up during the fall foliage season on a weekend (several years ago now), the traffic made it a horrendous experience. I have avoided the park at such times ever since. How many others had a similar bad experience? I would think hundreds or maybe even thousands. During busy periods, we need to either close the parkway for cars or impose significant tolls and provide a frequent shuttle bus service from a suitable park n ride lot. As it stands, transportation in the park can be a nightmare during busy periods and we need to make it more accessible to more people who have been turned off by the current situation. Meach Lake, Kingsmere and Lac Phillipe could still be accessible by car using the roads that are normally kept open during the winter. At the very least, major changes are needed on weekends during the fall, but a bus service during the rest of the season would be nice to give an alternative to car travel in order to access points of interest in the southern part of the park. This should all be part of a plan to make us less car dependent.

Shame on Rocketphish for opposing a comprehensive plan to reduce emissions and carcinogens in an environmentally sensitive area. Many parks already have communal transit plans as ways to reduce CO2 emissions and congestion in the park. A good example is Zion National Park, Utah. It has what can be described as a transitway that runs the length of the central canyon. The NCC should put parking lots just off Tache, in Chelsea and at the Visitors' Centre and make the Gatineau Parkway bus-only from May to October with designated stops along the route.

Don't follow your logic. The park is so busy that many people avoid it?

And I'm not sure how Rocketphish (just being realistic) is pro pollution?

Simple, if bumper to bumper traffic is anticipated along the Gatineau Parkway, you just don't go. For many, they just want to see the fall foliage, so buses would facilitate more having access and controlled access for private vehicles during very busy periods would make for a much more pleasant experience. Think of the special bus service offered along the canal during the Tulip festival and Winterlude. The bus service and the closure of the Queen Elizabeth Parkway actually allow more people to enjoy these events.

So, what's your point exactly. I am one of those people with no access to the park because I don't have a car. I have wanted bus service there for the 12 years I have lived in Ottawa. Its great that you have a car and can go anytime you like. For my part, I am happy to take the bus. Bring it on:tup:

The NCC is concerned with traffic congestion and the impact that motor vehicles can have on the park environment and the recreational experience in the park. They are trying to determine the best alternative to cars, which could include building transit links inside the park.

My point, exactly, is that preventing car access to the park is an illogical idea. While it certainly would cut congestion and be better for the park environment itself, it would not only hamper the recreational experience in the park for most people, but actually prevent it (though this might be the NCC's agenda).

Gatineau Park is effectively an urban park, not a wildlife sanctuary or a protected land reserve. It is located where it is to provide a recreational facility for the residents of the national capital region.

Supplementing car access to the park with bus service, on the other hand, would provide a means for the car-less to get to the park. This is undoubtedly a good thing for the car-less, but will not likely get many existing drivers out of their cars, due to their need to also transport the myriad paraphenalia that many park users bring with them as part of their park experience. Having to adhere to bus schedules would only compound this issue.

I believe that the short-term solution to the NCC's stated problem is simply to improve the flow of traffic by segregating cyclists and cars, and by providing more parking, so that people don't have to park along the shoulders of roads, which just further aggravates the flow of traffic. While providing a supplemental bus service is welcomed, I don't think it will do much to solve the problem. If the NCC wishes to also implement a bylaw preventing the use of loud radios and boomboxes, I'd support that too. :cool:

I'm not sure how you would go about segregating cyclists and cars in practice... by making paved shoulders? That might work on uphill and flat sections, but it sure as hell is not going to work on downhill sections. The last thing that's needed is to encourage motorists to overtake cyclists going downhill more than they already do.

Uphill climbing lanes I can see the value of though.

As for separate paths, forget it. I doubt they'd be built to anything like the standards of a road - these paths would have to be able to tolerate 70 km/h descents so at the very least you're looking at a cycleway that is the full width of a regular road lane (and probably then some, especially on hills) with some degree of shoulder and decent sight lines.

Paved shoulders would only serve to move the bikes a foot or so further away from the cars, probably encouraging more dangerous passing than occurs now.

I was envisioning that the NCC could provide more paved bicycle paths as a means of getting bikes off the existing narrow roads. The NCC certainly knows how to build pathways. So, build a parallel bike-only pathway beside the parkway... it wouldn't cost very much in the grand scheme of things. It could even veer off into the woods for a more natural experience.

And these paths would not have to tolerate 70 km/h descents. I can say from experience that as well as being quite exhilarating, cycling downhill at excessive speeds is also quite dangerous. But equally importantly, it's also illegal (the park speed limits are only 50 or 60 km/h, aren't they?). Slowing down the cyclists would be a good idea in general, for everybody's safety. This could be achieved by providing a narrower, curvier bikeway route.

For those cyclists bent on downhill speed, there's always Sunday mornings, from mid-May to early September, when the Gatineau, Champlain and Fortune parkways are closed to vehicular traffic for the express purpose of providing a non-car environment for cyclists and inline-skaters/roller skiers. Or do your cycling outside the park.



Regarding an earlier proposal to charge access fees for cars in order to encourage more transit usage - this just sounds like a means of artifically justifying the high cost of implementing the transit system in the first place.

The solution to a too-popular public attraction isn't to try to keep users away from the attraction (which just serves to make it exclusive), it's to make accessibility more efficient.

That kind of depends on the width of the paved shoulder/climbing lane. Make it something like 2.5 m wide and you can get two cyclists climbing side-by-side within the lane.

Cyclists aren't holding up car traffic going downhill so no lanes are needed there, not on the flatter parts. Just put the extra width on the hills where you get lots of cyclists trying to pass other cyclists.

Another option is to widen the roads by about 2 m overall but leave the lane widths the same as present and instead create a 2 m paved median that motorists can make use of for overtaking. That way instead of having a 1 m lane of questionable value the road instead has an extra 2 m for passing that can be used in both directions.

They're not all that narrow - they're actually pretty good. Compare it to the mountain roads that the Tour de France is using for example, and then consider that these roads see the very same cyclists training on them in advance of the Tour itself without the roads being closed.

The NCC might know how to build pathways better than the City, but that's not much of an achievement. The basic problem I have is the very term of "pathway". They end up being a paved path rather than a small scale road designed for use by vehicles.

Will the path get right-of-way over any roads it crosses or will it get a little stop sign regardless of relative traffic? Worse still will it cross the road within a pedestrian crosswalk? Are they going to impose some kind of idiotic 20 km/h speed limit? Will pedestrians be allowed on it - where they'll probably walk with the traffic rather than against it like they're supposed to on any other road - and will cyclists be expected to ring their bells all the time whenever pedestrians are around? I can just imagine the handwringing letters-to-the-editor already.

Do you have any idea of the sort of cyclists who are currently using the park? Lots of cyclists head up there in groups for various kinds of training. They're not going to take narrow curvy bikeways. That would be more dangerous than now. They need to be able to overtake other cyclists with ease going uphill (as well as any others, like roller bladers and roller skiers and even pedestrians since you're not going to keep them off this path in all likelihood) and to be able to go safely downhill without heavy braking. That means curves and grades similar to the existing road and enough width for two cyclists in each direction. For your idea to have any chance of working in practice, you would effectively be turning the parkway corridors into three-lane roads with a bit of a verge between a two-lane carriageway and a one-lane-wide bicycle carriageway.

And while your concern about the danger of cycling downhill at speed is touching, it's not based on any kind of reality. I've been down a hill at close to 90 km/h at Foymount on the Opeongo Road and it really isn't all that dangerous - the gyroscopic effect actually makes you more stable than at lower speeds. There are not too many incidents involving cyclists at speed in the park where the speed of the cyclist is an issue (i.e. idiot motorists overtaking at speed is far more of a problem). Anyway, I chose 70 km/h because I know the limit is 60 km/h but all roads have a design speed that is higher than the speed limit.

Overall, I just don't get the impression that you've thought this through all that much and/or are ignorant of the various requirements and the way things are likely to work in practice.

And what guarantee would there be that Sunday mornings would continue to be closed to motor vehicles (it's false to claim the parkways are closed to "vehicular traffic" since there's plenty of that going on on Sundays) once your paths are built?

The happy motoring lobby will be demanding that the roads be opened up to cars at all times once these paths exist.

Ahh yes... the cyclists have already been largely pushed into the hills so nothing like taking away one of the few places where cyclists actually feel fairly comfortable and which is within reasonable reach of the city without requiring a car to get there.

if you didn't want to widen the road or add paved shoulders you could design it like this (two way narrow road with bike lanes from the netherlands):

http://wwuploads.googlepages.com/NL_bike_narrow.jpg

But, NCC is not talking about banning cars in the park. Surely you don't think that their grand plan make the park transit access only? Cars will still have access to the park as they always do, but a new option to take transit will also exist. The only difference I see is that people like me who never go to the park because we don't have cars will now have a way to get there.

Isn't that a good thing?:)

Where you see the need to accommodate road racers, I was just trying to fullfill the needs of more casual road riders.

I didn't realize that providing a training facility for the relatively few high-caliber cyclists in this area was a requirement of the park's road system. That said, you're right... it is the way that the parkway gets used in practice by these riders (pack rides, tandem riding, downhill speeding) that is contributing to the cycling-related congestion on the parkways. (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/story.html?id=1555404)


Yes, I have cycled the parkways in Gatineau Park, though not frequently, and yes, I have achieved 70+ km/h going downhill, though that was traversing Smugglers Notch in Vermont, and not in Gatineau Park. I've also been driving in Gatineau Park and been stuck behind cyclists and unable to pass. I'm a relatively patient driver, but others are not, and some day somebody is going to get hurt. Anyway, this is all neither here nor there.

What's relevant is that there is a congestion problem on the parkways, and apparently all measures are being investigated to try to resolve this issue.

I'm sure that a dedicated bike-only pathway would serve the needs of the more casual road cyclist. If the road racer is to be fully accommodated, then I'll agree that this wouldn't work. Some sort of on-road provision would have to be made. What you're describing isn't so much a paved shoulder as it is a dedicated bike lane, and I'd support that. While the 'twin shoulder lanes' concept provides a narrower space for riders than a central 'overtaking zone', it would probably be less confusing for motorists, I'd think, specially when there is moderate to heavy two-way car traffic (think October when the leaves are at their prime), but they are both viable ideas. And twin bike lanes would also serve to discourage pack riding and allow a dedicated space for downhillers.

When I'm driving my car I curse at cyclists doing stupid things like taking up too much of the road. When I'm cycling, I curse at drivers passing too closly. These are basically incompatible modes of transport being forced to share the same space. If segregated spaces can be provided, then all the better for everybody.

Anything's possible with the NCC. While they might not "ban" cars from the park, they might very well impose a vehicle access fee, which, depending on the cost, could "prevent" some park users from being able to afford to use the park as regularly as they used to. I know people who drive to the park several times a week... that could get pricey. Might the NCC try to make the park less congested by making it more exclusive? That's not good policy.

And I'll reiterate that while providing a supplemental bus service is welcomed for non-drivers, I don't think it will do much to solve the congestion problem, as existing drivers aren't likely to take the bus to the park. It's simply wouldn't be very convenient.

I am sorry but building wider roads, bigger parking lots and more paved bike trails is simply going to damage the park. Also, if demand exceeds supply, then the price has to go up. This is simple economics. Adding bus service and continuing to allow free private vehicle access is not going to solve the congestion issue. I believe that tolls will be necessary, at least at times when congestion is a major problem. It is not at all unusual for parks similar to Gatineau to have access fees. We have been truly spoiled by having free access to Gatineau Park. As for frequent users, there are usually monthly or annual passes available at substantial discounts in parks with access fees. If tolls are only charged to control congestion, then free access may be maintained during less busy periods (most of the time), allowing frequent users to continue to access the park at minimal overall cost.

All I can say, is that something has to be done, as congestion can be a major problem, particularly during the fall season on weekends. Private vehicles are not an efficient way of moving large numbers of people through the park at those times.

Maybe the NCC should never have had a four lane highway built through the south end of the park? :shrug: This was going to happen sooner or later.

If they had not built the ramps to the Gatineau Parkway, that would have no impact on in-park traffic (or even a net decrease).

It seems to me that the obvious solution is to tie in that other fantastic NCC idea and extend their monorail system through the park.