Ottawa's Cycling Network

Meet Hans in front of Bruce Garner's sculpture 'Joy' near the Escape Bicycle tours and Retro-Rides store (65 Sparks Street).  We'll walk to west on Sparks to O'Connor and then south to Laurier. On Laurier, we will turn east to City Hall.  We'll cross the City Hall campus to Cartier Street and then east on Somerset to the Corktown bridge, where the tour will end.

From start to finish, the tour is just under 2 km.  If you left your bike or your car near the starting point, the walk back is about 1 km.   Hans will be heading back to Sparks St., so we can walk together!

Hans believes that cycling is important to the livability of a city, which he experienced in his native Netherlands for decades.  He feels a safe cycling network is the key to persuading people to cycle more and to broader adoption of cycling for urban transportation.

Hans on the Bike has lived in the Ottawa-Gatineau area since 1998.  Since 2009, he has been an active volunteer advocating for safer cycling. He was president of Bike Ottawa between 2010 and 2015.

Hans on the Bike is not very competitive as a cyclist; most of the time he is cycling around town doing errands or guiding tourists.  As a bicycle tour guide, he has heard tons of great feed back from people from all over the world (Even from the Dutch!).  He finds this encouraging.

Hans has received a number of awards for his work on cycling safety, including the Governor General's Sovereign Medal for Volunteers, the Service to the City award, the Mayor of Ottawa's City Builder Award, and several others.  During his employment at Embassy of the Netherlands, Hans spoke across Canada about the role of active transportation in a livable city. 

Hans's blog on cycling is called Hans on the Bike. 

The photo of Joy was taken by Dmitri Lytov, and is used under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence.