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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • This city needs to fucking deamalgamate 10 years ago. Holy shit I hate the stranglehold these dumbass suburban consullers have over these types of decisions.

    Like fuck,

    “Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley said he’s not against the idea of four units in principle, but worries the transit system isn’t yet up to supporting those kinds of densities in the suburbs. In his view, even three units isn’t sustainable without proper transit, since it risks turning backyards into parking lots.”

    He’s got it backwards, I don’t know if it’s out of stupidity or willful ignorance. The current single family homes and shitty road layouts of suburbs are the reason they’re hard to serve with public transit. You can’t design an obvious straight path where a route will go, it’s got to wind around weirdly. And each stop might serve ~30 people within a reasonable walking distance. If you allow higher densities that same stop can serve many more people making it much more profitable (not that every transit line needs to make a profit) and useful to people.

    And what the fuck is he talking about turning backyards into parking lots? Such a car brain take.

    Can someone get me into a room with this guy so I can talk about urban planning at him for several hours?






  • It’s wild that this city (read: the suburbs and rural communities that shouldn’t be a part of the city of Ottawa) decided the dude with ZERO political experience and ZERO urban planning interest was the right choice for mayor.

    It might be me being very tuned in to urban planning, but it feels like across the world, and even Canada, there’s a huge wave of urban planning progress being made. People are begining to realize that we cant continue to build car dependant suburbs, but our own mayor hasn’t caught up to this fact. There’s huge improvements in Montreal, Toronto, even places like Calgary and Edmonton are getting proper biking infrastructure. Granted, do see it slowly progressing in Ottawa, but my god it could be done so much faster and with less of this bullshit.

    Like, maybe before this he didn’t know anything about cities and shit like this, but you fucking hire someone who does and have them explain it to you. You’re a mayor now, you MUST be into urban planning and all it entails.

    Apologies for the long rant, this bugs me to no end. Can I protest somewhere? Can I give the mayor some book recommendations? (Walkable Cities by Jeff Speck, and Strong Towns by Charles Marhon.)



  • I kinda slowed down on his videos since that Tom Nicolas video, but I watched his video from a few days ago about blimps because blimps are cool. But it just seemed like a corporate ad. The amount of the video that’s renders of products vs actual products is pretty bad.

    It didn’t feel like a science video about blimps, it felt like half blimp startup ad, half simple blimp explanation. I don’t know, it just felt a little devoid of depth.


  • I guess so lol, it’s not all bad and it’s not lost forever. You can build on those parking lots eventually and upzone the nearby streets.

    It also seems like it could have really good connections to active pathways to the north and the rest of the neighborhood. The single family homes aren’t mcmansions and have fairly small lot sizes. And there actually seems to be a bit townhouses (row houses? the houses that share walls with other houses lol) which is good.

    At first glance it was worse than I thought.

    There’s more details that could make it better or worse, specifically with the road design in the middle of the new development there, if traffic is slow enough it could be nice. Lots of trees would help tons too.

    It’s not the best designed place of course, but it isn’t the worst thing in the world and there’s probably potential for improvement down the line.

    Appreciate you sharing this



  • Wow, what an amazing use of land within walking distance to a transit station. My lord is city is incredible.

    Side note, looking on satallite view at the intersection and holy shit that needs to be fixed, it’s terrible. It is 68m to get from one side to the other, crossing 8 lanes of traffic, 10 if you want to include the “bike lanes”.

    I’ve included an image of the original Godzilla to give a sense of scale (he was about 50m tall.)

    Godzilla VS. The Intersection of Limebank and Earl Armstrong

    (Not complaining at you OP)

    Edit: To be slightly positive, it’s really neat to see “cannabis” listed very casually. I actually read over it without thinking about how weird that would have been like 10 years ago.






  • I followed Catherine McKenny after the election happen and saw what they were doing with their organization, its all about cities and building good cities, and city finances. It’s so sad seeing how passionate they were and ARE about making good cities for everyone, and then seeing dipshit here complaining about a single road being open to everyone instead of only people who have cars.

    I love when these anti bike people go out at the quietest hour possible to film. There was another old boomer ass radio guy who was on a recreational path during a Wednesday afternoon or something and used that to show how few people bike. Imagine if we used the night time numbers for the Queensway and used that to justify shitting it down.

    Not to mention, it takes time for people to change their habits, you can’t open and close and road randomly and inconsistently (not the QED is currently like that) and expect people to use it. Again, imagine if the highway was only open during weekend for recreational drivers.

    And anecdotally, I live near the canal, on a street that actually touches QED, and I have noticed more traffic… for about 1 hour during rush hour, it’s not a big deal at all. I also have use it many many times for both fun on weekends, and for work, I can take it fairly quickly to get to ByWard and I’m ALWAYS in a better mood at work on those days.

    I hate how hostile Sutcliffe is to anyone outside a car. It’s madness to be a mayor in this day and age and not seeming to get it at this point. Like where does it come from? The data is just so clear on how good it is for EVERYONE, including drivers, to make sure everyone except drivers has a space in our cities (people walking, biking, riding transit).




  • I wonder if at any point someone will just give up admit it was fucked from the moment they decided to keep the wrong type of train for the service they should be running, and just buy the correct type of train. A proper metro train like every other other city trying to run a mass transit line with high frequency. Ideally something with radial seating, digital signage and wayfinding. Some stations in Japan even have info above where the doors will be in the station showing how full each car is.

    We’d need to rebuild all the current stations to be high platforms, and finish the under construction stations to also be high floor. It’s a lot of money sure, but no one will care in 50 years, they will just be thankful to have an amazing metro connecting the entire city. The Shinkansen went 2 times over it’s inital budget, but no one gives a crap now a days, they’re just happy to have it.

    We’re the capital of Canada, we need and deserve better than this shitty system.

    Oh, and add platform screen doors to all the above ground stations, partly for safely, partly for weather, make a huge different to quality of the service.


  • It would probably help a lot, even if the trains had the same top speed AND acceleration being able to go around tighter corners would help a ton. There’s a lot of weird turns in the system, especially Lees - Hurdman - Tremblay. Hurdman - Tremblay is actually where it derailed for a month or so.

    Here’s what it looks like currently:

    and I understand why they wanted it to go to Hurdman, it’s a large bus station.

    But I wish instead it looked like this:

    Then maybe they could have made some a busway where the tracks are now and maybe make Tremblay’s LRT station underground and then on the ground it’s a bus loop.

    Source for maps: https://otrain.railfans.ca/system-map


  • You’re correct about the longer cars needing wider turns.

    Really the biggest problem with the LRT is trying to make it an LRT after the tunnel was built. It’s really a metro system with the wrong type of train. Every other North American city with an “LRT” has a system where the centre goes thru downtown at grade usually in mixed traffic (I think, feel free to correct me.) Our system doesn’t, it’s fully grade separated the entire time, so why continue to use tram trains? Our trains are low floor which is great when you can’t build a tall platform downtown in the middle of the street. But when it’s grade separated you’re really limiting capacity as the wheels go into the cars taking up seating and standing space.

    It annoys the crap out of me that our city is continuing to use these fucking trains. I wish they either sold the trains and adjusted all the stations to high platforms and used real metro trains, or kept them and used them on a real tram system (maybe along Baseline or Carling, or up and down Bank St?)

    Sorry for the long post, the trains just bug me a lot, altho I’m greatful we have something and at least have the tunnel. The hard part is done, rails and stations and trains can be fixed. (Maybe not with this mayor however.)