Glen Cairn Pathway System Deterioration
This pathway through Glen Cairn is also crumbling away.
"This column is dedicated to the proposition that Canada (and indeed the world) is in a crisis situation and that fundamental social change is required to remedy this situation." - The First Column, Lambda November 2, 1971 This blog is inspired by my column of the same name in the Laurentian University Newspaper, Lambda, from 1971-1973. The title refers to the concept of subverting the system from within. To read key excerpts from those columns read the first few posts in this blog.
This pathway through Glen Cairn is also crumbling away.
Posted by rww at 10:56 0 comments
Labels: bicycling, bicycling infrastructure, Bridlewood, climate change, environment, freeze-thaw cycles, Glen Cairn, Kanata, multi-use pathways, MUPs, Ottawa, outdoors, recreation
The greatest long term threat to humankind is undoubtedly climate change. While the planet can no doubt survive anything short of a collision with a planet sized meteorite or asteroid, climate change has the potential to be be disastrous to human habitat.
In the short term the greatest threat to humankind is the COVID-19 pandemic.
While both of these threats are said to be non-discriminatory and many claim “we are all in this together”, that clearly is not true because while the threats may not discriminate, our societies and dominant economic system certainly do. Both climate change and the pandemic have a greater impact on the developing world than the developed world, and within the developed world a greater impact on poor and marginalized communities.
But what does this all have to do with multi-use pathways (MUPs).
Climate change has created multiple freeze-thaw cycles every year, rather than one each spring, causing excessive damage to cycling infrastructure, in particular MUPs. At the same time the pandemic has created an increase in outdoor activity and in particular much greater demand for bicycles putting much greater demands on cycling infrastructure including MUPs.
This is is the impact on a typical Ottawa MUP in Kanata.
We need to improve our multi-use pathway standards so that they do not completely deteriorate after one winter and connect the MUPs together to create a city wide system for recreational and utilitarian use, commuting, shopping, etc.
While considering this we need to keep these important facts in mind. Improving cycling infrastructure increases the number of people using bicycles for utilitarian purposes like commuting and shopping, which reduces the strain on roads and automobile infrastructure and reduces road traffic congestion. At the same time improving cycling infrastructures costs considerably less improving automobile infrastructure. Leaving the only reasonable conclusion that the most cost efficient way to reduce road traffic congestion is to improve cycling infrastructure.
Posted by rww at 21:45 0 comments
Labels: bicycling, bicycling infrastructure, Bridlewood, climate change, COVID-19, environment, freeze-thaw cycles, Kanata, multi-use pathways, MUPs, Ottawa, outdoors, pandemics, recreation