Nice to see this new bike repair station added to Village Square Park this week, along the Trans Canada Trail near Stittsville Main. It’s a good spot for it, with hundreds of cyclists passing by each week.
(This would have come in handy a few weeks ago when my wife blew a bike tire on Abbott street just past the park!)
Safer Roads Ottawa (SRO) is setting these up at parks, libraries and other public areas around the city, but there aren’t too many yet in the suburbs. According to SRO: “Each self service bike repair station includes a work stand, an air pump and the following tools:
- Philips screwdriver and stand
- 2 steel core tire levers
- pedal wrench
- 2 cone wrenches (8/10 mm 9/11 mm)
- Torx T-25
- Hex key set
- The air pump includes heads to fill both Presta and Schrader valves.
Information on how to use the repair station and tools can be found at www.Ottawa.ca/bikerepair“
UPDATE: City staff will be at the repair station to give tips on bike maintenance and safety on Monday, August 21 at 6:30 p.m.
***
Anecdotally, I’ve heard about more and more cyclists from outside of our community coming to visit Stittsville by bike. For example, blogger Andrea Tomkins and her husband Mark, who biked in from Westboro a few weeks back. That’s about 50km round trip, and you can do it entirely on recreation trails. More evidence: the bike rack behind Quitters is usually overflowing on a sunny weekend day.
Stittsville as a cycling destination? Sounds good to me.
Now let’s hope we see some safer bike infrastructure on Stittsville Main Street in the near future too.
Check out the awesome new bike repair station at Village square Park! TY to @SROttawa @ottawahealth for working w my office to set this up pic.twitter.com/fbjfkm21d5
— Shad Qadri (@ShadQadri) August 16, 2017
I ride regularly from Carleton Place to Stittsville to catch the bus into Ottawa and work. The repair station is great but I did not find any bike parking at the Village Square Park or nearby. There are 3 bike racks on abbot west on the trail but none in the city. I think that should come first if biking to work is to be aggressively promoted. There must be bike parking near every bus stop for sure.