Friday, October 22, 2010

2010 Election: O'Brien on walking and cycling

Over the course of the 2010 Mayoral Election campaign, Public Transit in Ottawa will be sitting down with as many mayoral candidates as are available, discussing their platforms and thoughts on transit in this city, and what they hope to achieve during their mandate, if elected mayor.

Mayoral incumbent Larry O'Brien is happy with what he's seen in terms of investment and promotion of walking and cycling in the city of Ottawa. He thinks that with the city's cycling infrastructure where it is now, and with the consideration of cyclists nearly built in to the road-building process, the bigger challenge today is ensuring that drivers and cyclists are adequately respectful and safe towards one another, and that would be his challenge for the coming term if elected.
The city has been doing a huge amount of work over the last five or six years in terms of preparing for the bike lanes. It isn’t just a visit over to Europe, which one of my council colleagues went over to in the summer along with the head of the NCC and Mayor Bureau from Gatineau. We have been working very closely with the NCC and Gatineau to harmonize our bike path strategy.

Quite frankly, bikes has now moved to the level where it’s about safety. In the downtown, until we get the buses off the streets and replace them with mass transit, it’s not going to be safe for bicycles to go through the core of the city, and my first responsibility is for the safety of the citizens.

2 comments:

RealGrouchy said...

...until we get the buses off the streets and replace them with mass transit...

With ridership of over half a million trips per day on a massive Transitway system, buses are Mass transit. You'd think having been Mayor for four years, he'd know that.

- RG>

Eric S. Smith said...

"...until we get the buses off the streets ... it’s not going to be safe for bicycles to go through the core of the city..."

We can't have bike lanes, because somewhere downtown there's a bus. Great thinking, Larry.