New Interactive Bike Map Available Just-In-Time For Your Spring Ride.
Editors Note: Bike Ottawa has done an incredible job with this interactive map and it includes Richmond! It is very comprehensive. Even if you are not a cyclist you will enjoy exploring the level of interaction available throughout the map with photos, street conditions, traffic stress, etc. along every street mapped. Check it out, you will be impressed. Councillor Jeff Leiper and especially the volunteers at Bike Ottawa who contributed countless hours of riding and editing to make this map possible can take credit for a job very well done!
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[dropcap]B[/dropcap]Bike Ottawa is pleased to present our newest website feature: interactive maps. These were made possible through the work of the Bike Ottawa Data Group, and supported by councillor Jeff Leiper, who provided funding that equipped us with GPS cameras, powered meetings, and that will carry the web-hosting costs of this tool for years to come. These maps will be a useful advocacy tool for Bike Ottawa, and will be a platform we will build on in the future. We invite you to check them out and offer us suggestions for improvement.
Level of Traffic Stress
Intuitively, we all know what traffic stress is. It’s the number one reason most people in Ottawa don’t ride a bicycle. For those of us who do ride, it’s what influences us to choose an indirect route, and to try to figure out the quietest streets to use. Traffic stress makes cycling feel dangerous and unpleasant. Factors that increase traffic stress are proximity to motor vehicles, traffic speed, traffic volume, and presence of on-street parking (doorings, unpredictable driving behavior). For every piece of road and path in Ottawa, we have calculated a “Level of Traffic Stress” rating from 1-4 based on the Mineta Institute formula. We’ve had to make some substitutions based on speed limit and class of road since we don’t have actual traffic speed, traffic volume, and roadway widths available to us (possible future open data datasets?). We also haven’t included intersections – that’s a complex calculation that we may tackle in a future edition.
LTS 1 = suitable for unsupervised children
LTS2 = most adults willl be comfortable here
LTS 3 = adults who currently ride will use this
LTS 4 = very few people would be willing to ride a bicycle here
