Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Lemieux Island area (iv)


At the south (Ottawa) end of the Prince of Wales railway bridge over the Ottawa River, the City has installed large gates & fences to keep peds and cyclists from using the bridge as a shortcut to Gatineau.

Thwarted peds have kicked down the fence, whose posts were bolted into concrete, etc etc.

There is a security guard on the Gatineau side, 24/7. If someone crosses the bridge, he points out the fence is there to keep people off because it is dangerous to use the bridge. So he sends the ped or cyclist back to the Ottawa side. There is a certain logic in this.

Would it be too logical to notice the obvious: there is a strong desire by peds and cyclists to use this bridge to join Ottawa and Gatineau. *  Rather than a fence, how about installing a deck and repairing the cable railing, and actually let people use the bridge. Imagine, an interprovincial bridge without cars! Naw, couldn't be done.



*Even Mr Greber called for it to link the Airport Parkway via a road through Carleton to the Champagne Parkway to the bridge to Fairy Lake Parkway to the Gatineau. We hopefully will never get such a road ... but a cycle path would be useful.

6 comments:

  1. Did you ever notice a place where sidewalks have been poured in the traditional 90-degree angles, and people have worn a path where they take the 'short cut'? This is the equivalent of stationing a guard at the end of the short-cut and sending them back to walk on the sidewalk. To answer your rhetorical question: yes, it would be too logical.

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  2. I love that someone would rather pay a guard than make this bridge useful. How about a nice sign warning of the danger to limit their liability and then they bugger off and let us use the bridge.

    Is the QC-side guard really empowered to do anything? I doubt it. Sigh.

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  3. The rent a cop on the quebec side has a cell phone and will call the cops if the peds dont turn around and go back, he says. I am not sure why he is guarding the bridge if he should be guarding the videotron FoCable.

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  4. Has there ever been an estimate done as to how much such a project would cost? What range would you guess? 10K$?, 100K$? 1M$ ?

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  5. I have no real idea, but its pretty certain 10k is too low ... just the supervision cost and materials would exceed that. One hundred k seems more likely... but then when the city replaced the staircases on Primrose and Empress streets a few years ago EACH one was over a million bucks.

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  6. 100k? So if citizens raised 50k could we get both cities and the NCC to each match it? hmmmmmmmmmmmm........

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