A contentious bike lane on Laurier Avenue could see the street become a one-way road.
City councillors will consider turning a section of Laurier Avenue West into a one-way street when they review the segregated bike lane pilot project in July.
A one-way street between Bay Street and Bronson Avenue is one of several options being considered by the city, but is the one that senior project manager Colin Simpson says he is most excited about.
“It’s easy to implement, it’s mostly signage and communication, and it would likely have the lowest cost impact and would probably provide the biggest gains,” he says.
The proposed change came out of a meeting Simpson had with representatives from the Bay Bronson Residents’ Action Group for Fair Access to the Road in December.
The group, representing many of the residents living in the six condominiums between Bay Street and Bronson Avenue, is protesting the loss of nearby street parking spaces.
“We’re hoping that the city will listen even more to what are the issues now that we’ve lived it for two years,” says Janine Hutt, president of the action group.
The meeting resulted in four proposed changes to the lanes. One option is converting Laurier Avenue into an eastbound one-way street, another is taking advantage of the current construction on Bronson Avenue and extending the project to include raising the bike lanes to sidewalk level between Bay Street and Bronson Avenue.
The city could also paint sharrows, or shared street markings, in place of the concrete barriers, or create a multi-use pathway connecting Bay and Albert Streets on Ottawa-Carleton District School Board property.
Hutt says she agrees that a one-way street may be the most practical option, but still has questions about safety and traffic.
“We have no problem with that as an option,” she says. “On the other hand, we would like to see what else is possible so that we can weigh them and be satisfied that all options were on the table.”
The four proposed options would only be temporary because in five years the city plans to implement its original plan to raise all the bike lanes to sidewalk level. The change is so drastic the city must wait until the entire street is being reconstructed.
At the time the pilot project was first planned, Laurier Avenue was scheduled to undergo reconstruction in 2013, but budget constraints and other projects pushed the date back to 2018.
Gary Watson, owner of Gary Watson’s Cycling Courier, says he thinks all the proposed changes to the bike lanes are impractical. He says although he is one of the bike lanes most frequent riders, he thinks they should go.
“It was a project that cost a lot of money and got quite a bit of people upset,” Watson says.
Such an opinion is a minority in the community, says Rob Dekker, vice-president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association.
“The people that we’ve been talking to have enjoyed the use of the bike lanes . . . we knew that there were always issues with the bike lanes that had to be resolved, it’s the reason why they call it a pilot project,” he says, adding he's happy the city is resolving such issues.
Parking is always going to be an area of concern in Centretown, Dekker says, but as more high rises and condominiums are being built individuals need to start using bikes more often.
In the spring, the city will be distributing surveys to residents, nearby businesses and bikers for their opinions on the pilot project to later take to city council in July.