In July 2020, the City of Ottawa placed traffic calming measures along Sherwood Drive and is now seeking your feedback about what permanent traffic calming measures should be made on this street. One proposed idea is: bike lanes!
Above image: Current configuration of traffic calming measures on Sherwood Drive. Make no mistake, that white strip is NOT a bike lane, but a parking lane where parking is prohibited from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
Creating bike lanes on Sherwood makes a lot of sense, in fact, it could be made into a nice east/west cycle route connecting the Trillium Line pathway from Hickory street (and nearby Carling station), to Sherwood Drive, to connect to Holland Ave, and then to the Byron bike lanes – creating a nice “CycleWest” route.
This street has been on people’s minds for years as a good connector route for people on bikes. In fact, in August 2016, our now Board Member, Érinn Cunningham, was writing about how to make a CycleWest route possible, and with fairly small investments from the city.
What Cunningham concluded in 2016 still rings true: “The ultimate outcome will be a bike route that makes good uses of existing infrastructure and provides a low-stress riding environment. This is precisely the type of infrastructure we need in Ottawa if we want to increases the number of cyclists.”
Be sure to fill in the survey and let the City know we should prioritize people on bikes over parking lanes.