This might be news to you our dear reader, but the University of Ottawa is a bit of a powerhouse when it comes to sustainable transportation. It might not be apparent right away, but the more you peel back the layers of this onion, the more it becomes obvious. And why not? All the ingredients are right in front of you... an urban campus, right in the middle of a dense city centre, with multiple entry points, and a lot of surrounding communities, not to mention some great amenities too.
The University's main campus is serviced by Ottawa's light rail transit system, it has several bike lanes flowing into it, and in the winter time, you can even skate to the campus. A lot of these are because of the great location of the campus, but don't be fooled, the University has worked hard to make a lot of these programs a thing for the community. A car share, rideshare, and carpooling program for drivers... a U-pass, shuttle bus, and the Para Transpo program for public transportation users, and a Bike Coop, secure bike enclosures, and outdoor bike repair station for cyclists.
Yep, life is pretty good for commuters at uOttawa - but, could it be better?
Wait, that's a dumb question. Of course it could be better, it can always be better. The real question is how can we make things better?
There is a design concept out there in the urban planning community called Vision Zero. Essentially it is a design imperative that imagines designing your space with zero traffic fatalities as the goal. There are of course many ways that you could make this happen (from draconian to utopian), but the idea is to find the right mix for your space. So let's imagine what this could look like at uOttawa if we focused specifically on cycling.
Why cycling? Why not. Full disclosure, I classify myself as a cyclist and would whole-heartedly say that my bike is my primary form of transportation. But that's not why I am focusing on cycling. When it comes to cost effective, low carbon, efficient, active transportation... the bike is the clear winner. It takes very little space to store, it can get you moving around the city fairly efficiently, and it is a great form of exercise. And frankly, more people on bikes means that it is actually a little easier for car-based commuters to get around.
But cycling is not for everyone and I want to acknowledge that right off the bat. Ottawa is great in the summer, but not so nice in the winter. The city is also huge, with a surface area of 2790 km2 (Toronto = 631km2, Calgary = 820 km2, Edmonton = 685 km2, Montreal = 365 km2, Vancouver = 115 km2) which as you can see, dwarfs other major cities in Canada. And there aren't that many bike lanes if we are being honest. These three factors alone make cycling in Ottawa daunting.
Nevertheless; if we put these things aside for the moment and focus on how to make things better, there are a few places we could start. Let's take a look at a few of them while offering some distinct uOttawa solutions.
Safety
If you are a cyclist in Ottawa, you can't help but feel your skin crawl every time a car flies by you, just barely outside your comfort zone. The wind pushes you off the road while your handle bars wobble frantically, and you can't help but wish for some barrier between you and car traffic. Well, segregated bike lanes are pretty great, but how about private bike lanes?
At uOttawa. there is a spectrum of bike lane options. There is a Multi-use pathway (MUP) that connects the main campus and the river campus. This is reserved exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists.
There are three marked bike lanes that connect to the main campus (along Somerset, Laurier, and Stewart), as well as some marked lanes on campus proper.
But what is missing is a protected bike lane along King Edward, which is by far the busiest and most dangerous street. In the uOttawa Campus Master Plan, there are calls for exactly that solution along King Edward. But, it will take the buy-in of the City of Ottawa and potentially the Province of Ontario to make that happen.
Access
Bringing your bike to campus is about more than just riding in, sometimes you have to have other ways of arriving. For instance, some people live more than 50 km away from the campus - making their commute at least 2 hours in each direction. For those people, a little assistance would not be unwelcome. Not to mention that sometimes the weather can shift dramatically and your sunny ride home is suddenly transformed into a rain filled test of your will.
Luckily, there is a solution at uOttawa. Both the O-train and many of the busses offer the possibility of bringing your bike while using public transportation. The train has bike friendly zones, while most buses have external bike racks. Event the uOttawa shuttle bas has a rack available for people who want to do a portion of their ride on public transit.
Amenities
Cycling is half the battle, what you do when you arrive is the other half... and that other half can make or break your decision to ride to campus. When you arrive, you want to know your bike is safe, you can clean yourself up, and you can change into something comfortable. So to make this happen you need good parking, good showering facilities, and a comfortable change room.
On campus, we use a centralized approach for showering facilities. This means that campus cyclists are encouraged to use the showering facilities at the sport complexes to freshen up and get changed. Otherwise, there are only a few buildings with showering facilities on campus and not every person on campus can access the gym showers (specifically contract staff, special students, and visitors). If we want to reach a more perfect solution, we need more showering facilities in new and old buildings.
Another important amenity is security, meaning a convenient and safe place to park your bike. No one wants to bring their bike to campus if there is a serious risk of it being stolen. This solidifies good bike racks as an important part of our security strategy. The gold standard is a secured parking space, usually an enclosed area that is security controlled to limit access. But there are also smaller solutions like individual bike lockers that can help in limited spaces.
uOttawa doesn't have many secure biking spaces at the moment (approximately 200 spaces for 2,000 cyclists), but we can look to solutions in countries like Denmark, which have much more robust secure enclosures. I mean look at these monster-sized cycling enclosures that offer double-height parking in a clean and transparent space. Offering safe parking in convenient locations goes a long way in giving piece of mind to your cycling community.
Policies
Policies-smolicies you might be saying; but you shouldn't because a few well placed policies can make a world of difference in creating a bike friendly culture. For instance, how about a policy to compensate cyclists financially for not contributing to the need for parking spaces? Or how about a policy to offer free emergency rides to cyclists if there is an emergency that requires them to take a taxi to an appointment? Or what about a policy that mandates that all bike lanes on campus are plowed at winter? There are endless possibilities.
What's missing at uOttawa? Well we don't really have many policies on the books. Actually, this might be our greatest weakness when it comes to cycling. Oh sure, there are design guidelines for what kind of racks to purchase or where we should put bike lines, but most of these are very surface level suggestions. What we really need is a strong model to follow...
A way forward
So uOttawa is pretty good but we want to get better and we need a way to move forward. Well, years ago the University of Ottawa achieved a gold level rating as a Bike-friendly campus - a distinction we worked hard to achieve. Unfortunately, the group that bestowed this honour on us stopped certifying campuses and so we were left looking for another certification to follow. And let me tell you... there ais a certification for Quebec, there is a certification in Vancouver, and there are a tonne in the United States... but there is nothing for us here in Ottawa, or even Ontario.
So we are toying with the idea of working with OCUSP to create a new Ontario bike-friendly certification. Not because we are seeking some kind of glory, but because we know that certifications help campuses benchmark and evolve to meet a standard.
Now these conversations are still in a very early stage, but we are hoping that we might be able to use our campus as a template to set a standard and help ourself grow into the true sustainable transportation hub we have always dreamt of becoming, while protecting our active commuters.
We'll check-in again with our progress but we would love any of your suggestions to help make this idea a reality. In the meantime, stay safe and stay free-wheeling.
~jonathan rausseo - campus sustainability manager
