As you might imagine, this initiative was well received. We even had a winter bike parade to celebrate the fabulous snow clearing and to encourage more opportunities for year round cycling. You can always check out the trip counter to see how many people are using the segregated bike lane on a daily or a cumulative basis. We're getting close to 200,000 since last July when the lane opened. Incredible!

So there's a lot to celebrate about cycling around here. But there's still work to be done. Fortunately, there are lots of folks doing lots of work from cycling advocates to city staffers to city councillors to everyday cyclists riding their bikes and making use of the great facilities that already exist.

One of the issues facing cyclists is route connectivity. This issue can take a few different forms. Sometimes there's a beautiful, family friendly off road trail that ends before your destination. So that if you're biking with kids on their own bike, or if you're a more cautious cyclist, you find yourself not feeling safe on the whole route. As one friend described these connectivity issues in car terms -- you would never expect a driver to get out of the car and carry the car down a set of steps or up and over a curb to continue to the destination. You would also not expect a learner to have to take the highway to reach a destination.

In the case of winter cycling, the connectivity issue is that some parts of cyclists' commutes are cleared of snow and other parts of our routes are tricky because of large snowbanks in bike lanes, gravel in bike lanes, roads narrowed by snow drifts...you get the idea.

Here in Ottawa we are blessed with City Staff who are doing all they can to accomodate cyclists. Right now, the City of Ottawa is conducting a survey on Winter Cycling in Ottawa that asks cyclists, among other questions, to identify up to three routes of up to 10K that should be cleared of snow to address this issue of connectivity.

I strongly encourage you to fill out this survey. Even if you don't often ride in the winter. Even if you don't live in Ottawa, I still think you might like to check out the survey just to get an idea of what you might ask your city to do to improve winter riding conditions where you live.

Thanks, City of Ottawa!

Kathleen