Glacial NCC needs to open parkways to people — now
The National Capital Commission should close portions of its parkway system to allow breathing room for walkers and cyclists hemmed in their houses — all day, for weeks now — in this historic pandemic battle.
Seems like a win-win, no-brainer, but this being Ottawa, there will, naturally, be 97 meetings before a plan is ready. The NCC did say this week it is developing a pilot project to close part of the Queen Elizabeth Driveway to vehicles. No details yet. It takes a village, after all, to put up a barricade.
Why expand the idea to other NCC roads? Because what we’re doing now isn’t working very well.
I’m on the shared path beside the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway about every other day, toodling between the Champlain Bridge and Tunney’s Pasture — on a mission to preserve the last fumes of sanity.
On bright, sunny days, it’s crowded. Cyclists are out, and families, and runners, and strollers, and the elderly. Can’t blame a single one of them; we’re all going a little nuts. You shut Gatineau Park, every city park, every gym, close the playing fields. It doesn’t leave much close to home.
People are doing their best to physically distance but there is, inevitably, a great deal of coming and going on a path three metres wide. (I measured it. A typical sidewalk in a residential neighbourhood, by the way, is about 1.5 metres.)
Fairly soon, the daytime highs will reach the mid-teens and stay there. And the weeks of isolation will weigh more heavily. Many more bicycles will be hauled out, more pairs of rollerblades, and daily walking that much more essential.
It is not lost on people that the first image on Ottawa Public Health’s “Being Active During COVID-19” section is a man jogging and a woman cycling. Great. Let’s do it.
The NCC has 52 kilometres of parkways on the Ottawa side. Its response so far has been to keep them open to regular vehicle traffic because of “logistical challenges, staffing requirements and the need to ensure continued access for transit and emergency services.”
Really?
Since 1970, the NCC has had Sunday “bike days,” when it stops car traffic for roughly six hours on about 25 total kilometres divided between three of its more popular parkways. From May to September, it is not a logistical challenge, takes hardly any staff, is sponsored by private companies, and does not create transit or emergency nightmares.
(Emergency? Nobody lives along the parkways. Where is an ambulance going, exactly?)
So, the easy thing to do, of course, is to start with “bike days” both Saturday and Sunday — right now — and see how it works on a trial basis.
Traffic is light now anyway, hardly anybody is taking transit, and the closure would get a lot of the cyclists off the path, making it safer for everyone else.
And if it works on weekends, why not expand it? The beauty of the NCC’s parkway system, too, is that it offers opportunity in the west, east and south, unlike the city’s hodgepodge plans of shutting a street or lane here and there.
But, so far, here is the NCC’s message line: “Subject to, and consistent with, ongoing advice from public health agencies, and in consultation with partner municipalities, the NCC will reassess options for road closures.”
Speaking of public health agencies, that was a confusing signal from Ottawa Public Health about not socializing with neighbours while at a safe distance, say, in your driveway.
Is this not exactly what OPH has been saying for four weeks? Stay at home, minimize trips, keep a two-metre distance from others, but get some daily exercise and, if possible, check on your neighbours.
Instead, what I hear is: take a walk, but don’t walk here; keep two metres away, but don’t keep two metres away if you’re briefly being social; don’t go to your cottage, go to your cottage if family are there (hello PMJT); wear a mask, don’t wear a mask; we can take cars off this road, but not off these other roads we have taken cars off every Sunday for 50 years; two metres is the rule, two metres might not be far enough. OK then.
There is, one supposes, the counter-argument that to open long stretches of public roadway is to invite more and more people to semi-congregate together, thus defeating the core principle of physical distancing.
Meh. Not persuaded. Public health officials — at all levels — invited us to exercise outside in the first place. Now, put your heads together, and give us somewhere to do it safely.