General Suburban Updates and Rumours

[ZEBuilder]

I suppose the issue is that nobody living out there would seriously wish to rely on public transit unless they had no other option. It's a 40 minute trip just to get downtown, for example. Compare that with a 15 minute car ride. Heck Google Maps estimates it's faster to bike than bus...though one would need to be a suicidal masochist to regularly ride their bike down Westmount or Block Line.

The issue with transit in this city is that it takes so long to get anywhere, so nobody really wants to use it unless they are forced to. Time is amongst the most valuable resources people have, so they're not going to want to waste it on the bus or LRT, both of which are often quite unreliable as well...the LRT always seems to be having problems and buses can be annoying if you have to transfer and you miss it because, say, someone is paying their fare in nickels or there are a lot of people with mobility issues getting on/off.

Block line has bicycle lanes on each side. Fischer-Hallman has MUTs on both sides. The Region has been actively putting MUTs and bike lanes on arterial roads so the suburbs are continually getting better. There are also trails through the parks and the hydro right-of-ways. I have cycled in that area and have not found it to be too bad.

Block Line has MUTs on the section between Strasburg and Homerwatson and bike lanes everywhere else, Bleams is supposed to be getting MUTs when they widen it, Homerwatson also has a MUT, Ottawa is slowly getting a MUT, then Strasburg will have a MUT from Ottawa to the new bridge. So it is definitely not a bad area to bike in compared to other neighborhoods, the only road that doesn't have decent cycling infrastructure in the neighborhood is Westmount, it did have the covid bike lanes though and numerous people were using them so they might put bike lanes or a MUT in eventually. 

If you were someone living in the townhouses that Activa is planning biking downtown wouldn't be all that difficult, you'd bike up to block line, cut through McLennan park, take the Ottawa MUT to Strasburg then the new bridge, then down Stirling and from their your at the east end of downtown. So it's anything but a desert when it comes to cycling infrastructure and as neonjoe already mentioned it's far from a transit desert.