Old St Patrick Street Cycling Facilities

Context

Old St Patrick Street has several community amenities including De La Salle High School, St. Clement Parish church, and medical facilities. The road is served by OC Transpo route 6 which provides connections to Rockcliffe, the Byward Market, Centretown, Bank Street down to Greenboro and South Keys, and O-Train Line 1.

Current Project

The 2013 Ottawa Cycling Plan identified a need for bicycle facilities along Old Saint Patrick St, particularly to support safer student travel to De La Salle high school, and proposed adding bicycle facilities between Beausoleil Dr and Cobourg St. An online public consultation to implement bicycle facilities occurred in 2018; however, the project was paused. Feedback received consisted of: support for the plan, concerns about the reduction in on-street parking, and concerns about the lack of physical separation of the proposed bicycle facilities. The public open house on June 7, 2023 restarts the public consultation process for this project.

Objective

The project’s primary objective is to provide a safe route for students and residents to access the school and other amenities on Old Saint Patrick by bike and on foot. The proposed cycling facilities will complement other ongoing nearby initiatives to improve cycling safety and connectivity

Design Features

The proposed design adds an eastbound bike lane (1.4 – 1.7 m in width) through most of project area and maintains a shared westbound traffic lane with added pavement markings for bicycles. The bike lane is proposed in the eastbound direction because cyclists using Saint Patrick Street tend to divert onto Old Saint Patrick Street when going eastbound rather than westbound. The project scope is limited to pavement markings and signage. These have been designed to reduce conflict between motorists / pedestrians / transit, and people on bicycles.

Key safety features that are built into the design include:

• 0.9 m wide dooring buffer adjacent to the parking zone;
• Integration of the design with the traffic calming elements recently built; and,
• A variety of pavement marking and signage features.

The design maintains essential parking spaces in front of the church for weddings, funerals and other events.

On-Street Parking

The proposed design had to balance competing priorities for space due to the physical constraints of the street. The safety of vulnerable road users has been prioritized through the addition of the bike lane, pavement markings and signage. Appropriate lane widths for transit operations have been prioritized to maintain current service. Maintaining parking in front of the church is also a high priority to support events such as weddings and funerals. To achieve these priorities, the design proposes reducing on-street parking in some locations.

Currently, Old Saint Patrick has ~18 parking spaces on the north side from April to November; parking is not permitted on the north side from December through March. The proposed design will eliminate on-street parking on the north side of the street year-round. On the south side, Old Saint Patrick currently has ~14 on-street parking spaces; the proposed design will reduce these to ~7 spaces.

While the proposed design reduces the number of on-street parking spaces on Old Saint Patrick, alternative on-street parking can be found on many nearby streets including Patro, Murray, Beausoleil, Clarence, Myrand and Cobourg.

Tell us what you think

Public feedback is a key component to finalize the City’s recommendations. We encourage interested members of the public to fill out the below Online Survey by June 30, 2023.

Accessibility is an important consideration for the City of Ottawa. If you require a disability-related accommodation, please contact the project manager.