● Existing infrastructure needs to keep up with 44% growth in cycling.

It’s a case of good-new, bad-news, when it comes to the growth in the number of people cycling in Ottawa.

The good news is that the number of cycling trips has gone up by 44% over the past five years according to bike counters in key locations in Ottawa. The bad news is that this growth is reaching the point where it may start to outstrip the existing infrastructure’s ability to handle the increased bicycle traffic.

This is the gist of a story in Metro News about the “2016 Ottawa Report on Bicycling” which was recently released by the advocacy group Citizens for Safe Cycling.

The number of cyclists outpacing infrastructure capacity should come as no surprise. Five years ago there were reports that Montreal’s most popular bike lanes were starting to get seriously congested.

Here in Ottawa, I remember ten years ago the racks were almost empty where I used to park my bike in an underground garage in a downtown office building. Today, it can sometimes be difficult to find one free space to lock up a bicycle.