Redlining Ottawa by Bicycle
[Home]
Summer 2011, I had bought an atlas of Ottawa and set out on a quest to ride every street in the city. I rode my first
ride in this journey on September 6, 2011. From the four corners of Richmond to Cumberland, Carp to Greely, I rode
every steet in those towns, and everything in between. I journyed into areas and neighbourhoods
that I had never explored before. Every crescent, every cul-du-sac, every gravel laneway,
felt the passing of my tires at some point during this quest. Eight years later, on July 8, 2019, I finished the
final street, Victoria Heights Crescent, in a somewhat non-dramatic fashion on my way to work.
I am not sure what drove me to do this, but I certainly saw a lot of the city. My usual strategy, was to pick a street
from the index and see how I could incorporate that into an interesting ride. I would cover a few more streets in the
neighbourhood and try to pick a different route home or to work as the case may be. Every time I went somewhere, I
would pick a new route, and dilligently record the progress with a red pen in the book. Most rides were early
morning on the way to my office in Kanata. Some of
the farther locations such as Blackburn Hamlet and beyond were saved for weekends when I had more time. As much as
possible, I tried to avoid riding the same stretch of road more than once in any one ride.
Obviously a few streets had to be skipped. Notably the highways 417, 416, part of the 174, and 7 are off limits to
bikes. I did not breach the security gate at the Shirleys Bay military compound, and the army base
in the east end had been
decomissioned and fenced off. I did however manage to ride Uplands though, as it is open to public access. Even though
it was part of the atlas, I did not redline Gatineau, using the Ottawa river as the northern boudary. However, I
crossed all five bridges over to the province Quebec at some point or another.
What did I learn out of all of this? Ottawa is a fantastic city for biking. With the exception of a few roads, pretty
much everything is pleasantly bikeable. Some of the new cycling infrastructure is terrible,
such as the bike lanes that hop on and off sidewalks, or the barricaded lanes which seem to be popping up everywhere.
By and large though, everywhere can be ridden. Some fantastic connections by dedicated off road paths exist, though
there is a lot of potential for more.
So how much does one have to ride to do something like this? Here are the stats to cover over 6300 named streets:
Total distance: 30897 km
Days of riding: 533
Longest ride: 161 km
Shortest ride: 5 km
Average ride: 58 km
Rides over 100 km: 23
[Home]