The city of Ottawa says the cycling lanes on Holland Avenue that it promised back in July will be ready for back-to-school commutes on Tuesday morning.
A manager in the city’s infrastructure department said crews are making “final modifications” to the new segregated lanes late on Monday night and will implement “sporadic lane reductions” on the road west of downtown to get the work done.
Those lane reductions are expected to have “minimal impacts on traffic at that time of night,” Carina Duclos, manager of municipal design and construction, said in a statement emailed on Friday.
Two painted 1.5-metre bike lanes – complete with 0.5-metre buffer zones and flex posts – will be installed on either side of Holland Avenue between Tyndall and Kenilworth streets, replacing the temporary cycling detour in place right now, which didn’t sit well with many residents and road users.
The current detour, installed because the city is replacing the Harmer Avenue pedestrian bridge over Highway 417, requires cyclists to follow green and white markings on the road called “super sharrows,” which weave them in and out of the lane amidst vehicle traffic. It’s either that, or sharing the west sidewalk with pedestrians.
Many community members insisted this setup is too dangerous for cyclists, and particularly for children. The Harmer Bridge project is expected to take about two years, with a target finish date of June 2020.
The city says schoolchildren may still bike on the west sidewalk instead of using the new cycling lanes.
Earlier this summer, city council reduced the speed limit for the affected stretch of Holland Avenue to 30 km/h, down from 50 km/h. That revised speed limit will still apply after the bike detour redesign early next week.
While some on-street parking spots are being removed temporarily because of the changes, the city says some spaces can still be found on the east side of Holland Avenue, from Kenilworth Street to Sherwood Drive, and on the west side, from the Fisher Park school intersection to Tyndall Avenue.
The old Harmer Bridge was demolished in late July.