Ottawa has lost so-called war on cars — and streets show it

Roads are getting faster and wider,

There is no war on cars. The city is launching no attacks on the automobile. Cars may be at war with the city, the but the war has been decided and cars have won.

They have won the way wars have typically been won. They have grabbed and control more territory, pushing pedestrians and bicyclists further and further to the side as our roads continue to widen, get faster and dominate our street life.

Cars have won by inflicting more damage — wounding and killing pedestrians and bicyclists with sad regularity. (From 2009 to 2013, 617 pedestrians and cyclists were injured and 7 killed.)

Has a pedestrian ever hit a car and killed a motorist? The worst a pedestrian can realistically do is make a driver late.

Cars have won because the city has surrendered. Even minor attempts at bringing a bit more comfort and safety to pedestrians and bicyclists is fought tooth-and-axel, and the city wilts.

The most recent surrender comes in the Glebe, a neighbourhood flush with bikes but with no suitable bike infrastructure (there are some shared streets — i.e. streets — and sharrows, but little else).

The city, looking to remedy the severe lack of bike infrastructure in some of our central neighbourhoods, spent years designing a bikeway along O’Connor Street, to run from Wellington Street to Fifth Avenue (and perhaps all the way to our new jewel, Lansdowne).

There were discussions, consultations, plans, and a lot of time spent by our public servants and residents. The results were good. The bike network was expanding. We would have a proper north-south link to our vaunted Laurier Bike Lane.

And the benefits would be for more than just bicyclists. Downtown, O’Connor is a dangerous strip.

It serves as an on-ramp to the Queensway, with commuters speeding through Centretown to flee the core. A bike lane offers traffic calming. It provides more buffer for the sidewalks. It makes the street and the neighbourhood more livable.

In the Glebe, O’Connor isn’t the drag strip it is north of the Queensway. But much of it is wide, and wide streets encourage speeding.

O’Connor has narrow sidewalks and no buffer between the sidewalk and the road. It is a bus route. It has a school. Bike lanes would provide a necessary road diet, protecting all users, including kids.

But, alas, there were complaints about parking, so the stretch of bike lanes between Strathcona and Fifth Avenues have been nixed. But this isn’t really about parking.

The on-street parking was to be relocated to side streets, and for much of the stretch there is enough room to add a bike lane and keep the parking spots. Little, if any, parking would be lost.

The city says it’s doing it for the kids. A school bus stops on O’Connor, supposedly making a bike lane impossible ... because the bus can’t stop around the corner.

Because that stretch of the bike lane can’t allow for a bus stop. Because all the kids who walk or bike don’t deserve the protection of a bike lane if it causes some residents to walk a few more feet to a parking spot.

Councillor David Chernushenko — who made a documentary about the value of bicycling — is reduced to seeking a few meagre concessions to make the stretch of road incrementally less hostile to bicyclists.

This is what surrender looks like. Chernushenko deserves no specific condemnation for trying to negotiate favourable terms for Ottawa’s bicyclists. Safety, comfort, economic stimulus and community are balanced against parking and the need to drive fast, with the latter usually winning.

The terms of surrender will be finalized at the June 3 Transportation Committee meeting.

The most recent surrender comes in the Glebe, a neighbourhood flush with bikes but with no suitable bike infrastructure.