Laurier bike lane where crash occurred denounced as unsafe
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: May 16, 2019
Cycling on Laurier Avenue outside City Hall is fundamentally unsafe and can’t be fixed so long as bikes share the same pavement as cars and trucks, say a transportation expert and a city councillor.
Barry Wellar, a geography professor from the University of Ottawa, got a long, close look at it last year. He was being inducted into the Order of Canada and he and his wife stayed at the Lord Elgin Hotel to skip the morning traffic.
“Our window overlooked that intersection (Elgin Street and Laurier). I could have died of a heart attack so many times it would make your head spin,” he said.
“I thought, my God this is just complete lunacy. I don’t know what other word to use,” he said.
The problem, Wellar and others say, is that cyclists have their own lane, but it provides no real protection. It’s only paint, and in some cases the bike lane is between lanes of car and truck traffic.
“The design of that area is absolutely scary.”
Outside City Hall “you have a stoplight there, you have traffic coming out (from the underground parking levels) and I don’t understand the visibility of this thing,” he said. Drivers often block the sidewalk or bike lane while trying to enter Laurier.
He said cars and bicycles cannot share the same flat surface along this busy area.
“Why didn’t they put a curb in there so the cyclists have some protection?” Wellar called painted lanes “a joke. There needs to be physical separation, there’s no doubt about it.”
Councillors Jeff Leiper and Shawn Menard were planning to join a group demonstrating in front of City Hall to call for safer cycling infrastructure. The demonstration was planned for noon Thursday.
“This portion of the Laurier bike lane between Nicholas and Elgin is poorly designed,” said Leiper, who represents Kitchissippi and is a cyclist. “It is dangerous in its design by putting cyclists in the middle of criss-crossing traffic.”
One example is where cars from the Queen Elizabeth Driveway come onto westbound Laurier and some cross the bike lane, which runs between lanes of cars there. Another is where cars turn from Laurier onto northbound Elgin.
Both of these points affect the westbound bike lane, which is where Thursday morning’s collision happened.
“I’m through this corridor virtually every night. Last night, there was a driver across the bike line, which keep in mind is sandwiched between car lanes,” Leiper said.
“There is no protection for the rider. There is no segregation for the rider. It is just a strip of paint.”
He says the best solution is the one used on Churchill Avenue and Main Street, where the bike lane is the same height as the sidewalk. Other solutions involve making cars stop farther back than cyclists at red lights, and giving cyclists a green light before cars have one.
More to come.
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