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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 5h

Yes, it will be a bit more expense, but the city should do it anyway. They plan to expropriate land from several gas stations on St Laurent for that project, so it's not like they refuse to take ownership of gas station land. They just don't want to spend the money on us.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 6h

Watermain break? 1952 install year.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 7h

So strange that Fernbank is not a truck route, but downtown streets like Elgin, Gladstone, Somerset, etc are.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 8h

That's why we don't allow them to use the street as a through street. Put in some modal filters or traffic diverters and suddenly a dangerous street is so quiet it's safe enough to bike in the roadway.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 8h

I find we always get the scale wrong on these. Look at these actual Dutch protected intersections. Those bike lanes are wide enough to drive a car down them.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 8h

I have no issue with this. Cars and bikes only need to be separated when there are high speeds and volumes of car traffic. Instead of separation, we can limit though traffic to make the street safe to bike on.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 9h

I've also biked on this section of Bronson though the Glebe and I'd never do that again.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 9h

I often bike on this stretch of Bronson to get to Gladstone. I'm comfortable going that way myself, but I would never bike there with my wife or kid. And that's the end user we should always keep in mind when building bicycle infrastructure.

"Will this be safe enough for children to use?"

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 13h

Great write up, I always love the bits of history. What are your thoughts on the originally proposed route up Percy instead of Arthur-Christie-Bronson?

And I agree that Percy should be contra-flow up to Laurier (all the more important with the upcoming Bay Street Renewal).

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 15h

Re: Gladstone/Gilmour.

Gilmour is a decent east-west route. The issue is the routing up Arthur, Christie, and BRONSON. Biking on Bronson Ave with no cycling infrastructure shouldn't be part of any official bicycle route.

The city just needs to expropriate land from these gas station parcels.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 16h

Re: extending the Percy St cycle-track to Gilmour.

That would be a waste of money. What Percy Street needs is traffic calming: fewer cars, slower cars, and while we're at it, more trees. You could make the street a much safer, more useful bicycle route with just a modal filter and contraflow lane.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 19h

1. If you want to reduce fees to encourage development, stop making infill pay for roads they don't need.

2. If you want neighbourhoods to see benefits from new development, put the property taxes back into the same neighborhoods. Don't create a new tax that only applies to the new residents.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 19h

Community Benefits Charges go to Council today. The proposal is to reduce them from 4% of land value to 2% (or 1% near transit.)

This is a tax on renters and new homebuyers, and also a tax on density, as it only kicks in at 5 storeys - sprawl pays no CBCs.

Tax the things you want to DISCOURAGE.

It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 6d

170 Slater, the collapsed parking garage being redeveloped into 538 residential units.

Community Benefits Charge (CBC): ~$600,000
Development Charges (DC): ~$13,000,000

Of those DCs, about $3-million goes exclusively towards suburban arterial roads. Those should be eliminated long before the CBCs.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 20h

I'm not sure it's going to make a difference. And this does nothing to address the thousands of illegal driveways that they already can't handle enforcement on.

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 1d

What the city needs are more By-Law officers and proactive enforcement. It shouldn't be up to neighbours to rat each other out to By-Law, and then for By-Law to fail to enforce the rules.

Front yard parking has been illegal since 1965. How are we still trying to figure out how to enforce it?

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 2d

I'd love to see Ottawa give more local control to smaller regions of the city. An amalgamated city where every policy and decision needs to apply to rural, suburban, and urban areas equally simply does not work.

Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 3d

This video is a long time coming.

People always ask me: what makes Montreal so ambitious on urbanism? (At least for bikes and pedestrians.)

I've been thinking through this and asking Montrealers, and in this video I want to cover *part* of the answer.

The Secret of Montreal’s Urbanism Success

YouTube video by Oh The Urbanity!

youtu.be

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 2d

Had to hold my tongue here.

Why do they always park on the sidewalk?

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 3d

The photo is labeled "Stream at Dow's Swamp"

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 3d

Reminds me of this 1891 photo of Dow's Swamp. (Dow's Lake)

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It's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 3d

The City needs to dedicate way more resources to this problem. The fact that they can't keep up with reports is not a good sign.