Ward 11 - Beacon Hill-Cyrville

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Website: http://michelbellemare.ca/
Phone: 613-204-0805

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Website: http://www.oneilbrooke.com/
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"Comments on Citizens for Safe Cycling's proposal:

1. Major cycling projects & 2. Completing the Ottawa Cycling Plan
This depends on what the people of ward 11 tell me. It looks like this part of the proposal would be expensive and I don't see how it is required, so my general policy applies. It's it's required, do it and do it well. If it's not required, stop and ask constituents before committing to anything.

You make a good point about road construction though. Cyclists should be taken into consideration and safe detours should be provided in construction zones.

3. Integrating Cycling with Transit
I don't use the Rack & Roll service personally but understand how people use technology. If a technology is unreliable (it only takes a few failures) then people stop using it. Starting a service like Rack & Roll and then doing it badly is a waste of our money and makes the service useless to the people that would actually use it. Unless overridden by my constituents I would support the an implementation of the Rack & Roll service that would be reliable.

4. Police pro-cycling campaigns
My bike got stolen a few years ago. To add insult to injury the thief didn't just steal my bike from my back yard, the thief upgraded! Yup, another bike of lower quality was left by the thief. I called the police and they couldn't care less about the theft of my bike. I told the police about the bike that remained and asked them to come pick it up. It was evidence, the thief's finger prints would have been all over it. After many phone calls and several weeks someone finally came to pick it up and I never heard another word about this incident from the Ottawa Police Service.

This is wrong on so many levels. Bike theft is property crime. While it may not be as significant an event as assault, rape or murder it is still a crime and needs to be treated as such by the police service that we pay for. Failure to properly address this crime will embolden criminals to continue in their ways and graduate to more serious crimes. The Ottawa Police Service needs to be educated. None of the police officers I have spoken to know their Oath of Office while it's almost unanimous among my constituents that they should know it! Ye, we need to educate the OPS and make sure that they treat property crimes appropriately.

5. More bike parking
My position on this is going to be entirely dependent upon the opinions of the electorate within ward 11. It looks like the Citizens for Safe Cycling are asking for new funding here and while more bike parking may be needed it is not clear that there is any legislative requirement that the city is required to fulfill it.

6. Keeping bike lanes snow-free
I have seen people in Ottawa bike during the cold months and while not for me, it makes no sense for the city to be consciously doing something to interfere with our citizen's mobility. So stopping the snow removal crews from blocking bike paths should be fairly easy. This does not mean the city should start snow clearing on bike paths though! I'd need more input from constituents before incurring additional costs for service expansion.

7. Reinstate cycling safety and promotion programs
I certainly prefer this approach to the policing approach but it's not my money, it's our citizen's money so I would want to hear from them before I would commit any new resources to a cycling public education campaign.

8. Cyclist representation to the City
Having the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee meet more often is going to incur additional costs, but, this is the right thing to do if it's going to ensure that citizens with an interest in cycling issues are better represented.  Having this committee review the cycling detour routes before construction is authorized makes a lot of sense as well.

9. Let's measure up!
How about we save the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to get consultants to do yet another review? If this is something that is really important to citizens who cycle, do the review yourself. If I get elected and you want me to, I'll make sure to distribute it to the rest of city council."

Phone: 613-276-8817
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Website: http://timtierney.ca/

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