Kind of quiet here, so I thought I'd ask a question that's been on my mind for a while:
What would make Ottawa better, in your view? Big or small.
For me, it would be to improve the walkability. I walk, jog, cycle, motorbike, and drive, all fairly frequently. It drives me wild how long it takes (mid winter or bad weather) from the time I press a crosswalk button, to the time the lights change. I'd love to see that improved.
On the subject of walkability, it would be great if there were more mixed use, like corner shops mixed into residential neighborhoods. Too many neighborhoods are just rows of houses and are totally cut off from any sort of services.
The urban and heck suburban design of this city is atrocious. If you were trying to design for people to be a siloed and car centric as possible while maximizing city costs to deliver services... well you nailed it.
I'm a firm believer that cornerstones shouldn't be allowed to sell only chips and pop. They should be forced to be mini grocery stores and abolish the giant Loblaws stores and Walmart's. They are not needed. Smaller stores scattered everywhere would be better imo.
I really miss using public transit. I used public transit as my main mode of transportation up until about 6 months into the LRT construction. My 40-60 min commute became 60-80 minutes, at which point the consistent 30 minute commute by car took over.
These days I work from home, but even when I've tried to use public transit it's been so hard to.
It's going to take the city a long time to rebuilt trust in the system.