I’ve been low-key participating in Week Without Driving. It’s a challenge across North America to people not to use a car for their travel in order to experience what those who don’t have the privilege of driving have to undertake every day, similar to the Transit Challenge here in Ottawa.
You can scroll my Mastodon feed on the front page of this blog to see my daily experience so far. It’s not particularly interesting. Nat and I live in Ottawa’s OG 15-minute community: fairly densely populated, chock-a-block with shops and services and served by the best transit and cycling infrastructure on offer. In 2024, private vehicle travel was just 8% of my trips.
Yesterday, though, was going to be a real challenge. I had multiple work stops to make in both ends of the city. This weekend, the LRT was out of service as they test it leading up to opening the big eastern extension in the next few months. I contemplated bailing on my no-car commitment, but nothing in my calendar was can’t-miss, so I forged ahead.
My first stop was in the east end of the city, a little over 20 km away. We’ve been fortunate to have wildly nice weather all week – little wind, sunny skies, cool temperatures – so I opted to ride it since I didn’t need to be there until 9 am. It took me a little over an hour, and made for a great start to the day. My route to Orleans takes me through lots of dedicated cycling infrastructure in the city core leading to the eastern parkway that’s closed to cars on weekends.
When I was through there, I opted to use transit’s rack-and-roll to get to another event back in the city. The ride to get to the spine transit route was just 1.5 km and took about 5 minutes. While the LRT extension is under construction, Orleans riders need to use a bus to get to the current LRT terminus. That bus came within a couple of minutes of getting to the stop, and took 8 minutes to get to Blair station. Ordinarily at Blair riders transfer to the train, but since it was out of service yesterday I transferred to the replacement bus line, the R1. That left very quickly after I arrived at Blair, and it took me 14 minutes to get to Tremblay station where I used the pedestrian bridge to cross the highway and ride the back streets to my event. So far so good!
In a few months, that will be a single train ride – much more comfortable and faster. Rack-and-roll is a great option, but our current fleet of workhorse buses are showing their age while we wait for delayed electric replacements. They’re creaky, loud and sometimes crowded. I’d rather be on a train.
I dropped by another community event and was ahead of schedule. My next event was in the other end of the city. I rode 2 km to the nearest transit station thinking I’d catch the R1 again to get to Tunney’s Pasture – the current western LRT terminus – where I’d figure out a rack-and-roll to get to the other end of the city for my next event. But, with time to spare I finally wound up deciding to ride to that, about 17 km away. The ride from Hurdman station to Nepean is a delight, starting with a multi-use path hugging the Rideau River, using the new pedestrian/cycling bridge at Vincent Massey Park/Carleton U to get to the Hartwell locks, crossing those, then using the Central Experimental Farm pathway system to continue west. There were cows. The last portion was on low-volume Iris and Morrison. Those were not as comfortable as the segregated infrastructure I’d been using up to that point in the day, but were at least not big arterials.
When I’d finished with that event, I rode 1.2 km to get to the transit spine again and rack-and-rolled it back to my neighbourhood on the 61, which came quickly when I got to the stop. In maybe a year and a half or so, the western extension of the LRT will open and I would be able to ride another few hundred metres to get to the train, but yesterday it was another bus ride. That ride was about a half-hour to get to Tunney’s Pasture, adjacent to my next event.
From that event to my next one I had about a 2.5 km ride on busy city streets, although I was able to use painted bike lanes with some delineation with flex-sticks along Island Park Drive to get to the church where my next event was being held. At this point in the day it was getting hot! I’d opted to spend the day in shorts and was glad I did. When that event finished, I noodled how to get back to Nepean for my last event of the day. Yesterday was quite a lot more cycling than I normally do in a day, and my legs were getting tired! In order to cut the distance a little, I rode the 3.8 km from the church along Island Park and Fisher to get to Baseline where I would catch the 88 spine route to get to my next destination. Neither Island Park nor Fisher is particularly comfortable, and traffic is fast. There are some dedicated cycling portions, but with some construction along the way I ended up on the sidewalk for some brief portions.
Once I got to Baseline the 88 came quickly, and it was a quick trip to the next church at which I was due for an event. As an aside, I’m always a little floored by how busy the 88 is – even at 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon. A colleague of mine rode to the same event, and her next destination was most of the way on my route home using Iris and the farm path, so I rode the 10 km to my house enjoying the conversation until our paths diverged along the way.
It was a busy day and I traveled around 90 kms, roughly 60/40 cycling/rack-and-roll to attend all my planned events. The weather was spectacular, if a bit hot late in the day; this could have been a very miserable day if it had been raining and I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have just grabbed the car, instead. I’m fortunate to be able to cycle some longer distances. Some of those legs of travel, had I been doing them entirely on transit, would have required transfers. My guess is that those wouldn’t have been awful since all the routes I traveled like the 61, 39, 88 and R1 are frequent, but when transferring even 10 or 15 minutes can feel like an eternity. I was never more than two or three kilometres from the transit spine, often closer, but in rainy conditions those short hops could still have been very wet.
I’m still very struck today by how close I was at any given time to the current or future LRT. In a few months when the eastern extension, and in maybe a year and a half when the western extension opens, a day like yesterday would be very different. Biking to LRT will make for much faster, comfortable and reliable trips.
Today is much quieter. I’ll bike a couple of kms on each end of using the LRT’s Trillium line (which is not part of the testing that has put the Confederation line out of service) to get to an event in the far south end, and I’m contemplating biking to an event in Old Ottawa East. Clothing is a consideration. It’s looking to be a hot one today and I’d rather not wear pants…,
