By Shelley Craig
The City of Ottawa is narrowing streets and adding medians to control the flow of traffic, but the measures may be unsafe for cyclists.
Josh Caton, a frequent cyclist in Centretown, was waiting at a red light by a curb last year when a car clipped the back of his bike.
“The roads are already too narrow and hard for cyclists to find room in, and I think the new modifications will make it much more difficult to avoid collisions,” he says.
Daphne Hope, a planner for the city, says staff is still evaluating the new measures. Results of the safety study have yet to be revealed.
“The measures we are taking for controlling the flow of traffic will slow down traffic and, in theory, make it safer for everyone,” says Hope.
The narrowing of roads will make it harder for vehicles to change lanes quickly and dangerously. Staff hopes the measures will make roads safer for cyclists swerving in and around cars.
But a big problem for cyclists may be the addition of median “tongues,”pieces of curb which jut out into the flow of traffic.
“The tongues are unpredictable and have almost sent me flying into cars a few times,” says Caton.
In 1999, there were 268 collisions involving bicycles and cars in Ottawa-Carleton, none of which were fatal.
However, statistics on bicycle accidents are not completely accurate because the majority of incidents aren’t reported, says Staff Sgt. Phil Tennant of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service.
According to the city’s Web site, Ottawa is the eighth most cycling-friendly city in North America.
Hope says the city is also trying to encourage people to commute by bike by putting bicycle lanes on Gladstone Avenue, Cartier Street and Elgin Street.
“This gives the cyclists safe, quick access to a one-way street heading west that they can cycle on, in both directions,” says Hope.
The city is also modifying street signs to allow cyclists to turn left or right, even where vehicles are forbidden to do so, to make certain streets safer for cyclists wanting to go in specific directions.