UPDATE- May, 2017: New bike lanes have been introduced along Cyrville Road, thus addressing many of Élise’s concerns described below. Her’s was a great description of the ‘before’ conditions. The new bike lanes along Cyrville are described in this post.
Bike access to the community of Pineview from areas west and north of it is very limited. The Trans-Canada Highway divides it from the west, while the Queensway separates it from the north. I’ve described one option that requires walking your bike over the Blair Transitway pedestrian bridge and carrying it down a set of stairs or taking the elevator at the north end of the bridge. Oof! Another access over the Trans-Canada along Innes is very dangerous and foolhardy to bike along, as described in this post. The other option is to ride along Cyrville Road over both the Queensway and the Trans-Canada. It unfortunately is less than stellar, with intermittent sections of bike lanes, gravel shoulders, rough road conditions, and lots of speeding car and truck traffic.
Élise lives in Pineview and recently described the ride along Cyrville road from Overbrook to Pineview in a series of Tweets. She was very kind to let me re-post them in sequence below. I’ve included a map charting where she took the photos along the route.
Her tweets did elicit a reaction from her city councillor who responded with encouraging signals he is pushing for safe cycling infrastructure to be introduced along the length of this important access to Pineview. Until such time, here’s what riders have to contend with.
All text and photos below credited to Élise Gauthier.
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OttawaVeloOutaouais 