Vancouver isn’t the only city building separated bike lanes in its downtown core. Ottawa has a new bike lane down Laurier Avenue.

The bike lane itself isn’t that notable. It looks just like the ones on Dunsmuir and Hornby here in Vancouver. The only reason it caught my attention is because the City of Ottawa has wired up its bike counters to automatically upload data once a day and display it on a website now and a physical display on the bike path soon.

Compared to the stats for Vancouver’s bike lanes, Ottawa’s Laurier bike lane is similar to the lane on Hornby, but Hornby sees about 15% more cyclists on weekdays and 30% more volume on weekends. The Vancouver stats aren’t out yet for September, but I doubt we’ll see the large increase in cycling that Ottawa saw. The Laurier Lane ends near the University of Ottawa, and classes started on September 5. Many cities see peak cycling volumes in early September, but not Vancouver – likely because we don’t have a big downtown university campus.