Well Spoken!: Ontario and Quebec to link vast network of bike trails
| Daniel Drolet | |
| Ottawa Citizen |
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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Quietly, without fanfare and with a minimum of money, a network of bicycle paths is being built throughout Ontario and Quebec. The paths already extend over thousands of kilometres, and tie in to networks of similar paths in the United States and other provinces.
Built largely by municipalities, they are now in the process of being tied together: In Ontario, a path from Niagara-on-the-Lake to the Quebec border near Cornwall opens this summer, and the province is in the final stages of putting together a province-wide trails strategy.
In Quebec, the Route Verte, a network of 4,350 kilometres of bike paths all around the province, is more than three-quarters done and on target for completion in 2007.
The Ontario and Quebec routes are being tied together with a ceremonial bike ride from Brockville to Montreal that begins Monday and winds up Friday.
Meanwhile, Ottawa, a cycling city, is out of the loop: A draft cycling plan to be released shortly puts little emphasis on connecting the city's extensive path system with the growing network of inter-city pathways.
The two big bike networks are Quebec's Route Verte and Ontario's Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail and Greenway.
Quebec's Route Verte, which bills itself as the largest bike path network in North America, was begun in 1995. It involves 320 municipalities, a number of organizations and the provincial transport ministry working toward the goal of putting Quebec on the map as a cycling destination.
Progress on the Route Verte was the theme of a one-day conference on cycling and tourism organized by Velo-Quebec, a Quebec cycling promotion group, in Sherbrooke, Que., last fall.
Jean-Francois Pronovost, executive director of Velo-Quebec, said that as of October 2004, the province had 3,357 kilometres of officially designated bike routes. Of that, 1,335 kilometres were stand-alone paths, 1,334 were paved shoulders along highways, and the rest was designated lanes on roads.
(In the Outaouais, 183 kilometres have been completed, with 49 kilometres remaining.)
The total investment was $120 million, more than half from the province and the rest from municipalities involved.
A Quebec government policy adopted in 1995 allows for shoulders to be paved and designated as bike lanes when highways are rebuilt and car traffic on the roads is greater than 5,000 vehicles a day. For example, in the Outaouais, the shoulder of Highway 148 between Gatineau and Masson is a paved, designated bike path.
At the Sherbrooke conference, Julie Boulet, Quebec's junior transport minister, reaffirmed the provincial government's commitment to the Route Verte and pledged that it would be completed by 2007.
"The Route Verte will allow us to brand Quebec as a cycling destination," says Suzanne Lareau, president of Groupe Velo, an umbrella group that includes Velo-Quebec, adding that Ontario hasn't been active yet in pushing itself as a place for a bicycling holiday. "When they get active, they will get very active."
Ontario is about to make an official move in that direction: Last year, the Ontario tourism ministry began the development of an Ontario Trails Strategy.
The goal of the strategy, according to the ministry, is to develop "a world-class system of trails that captures the uniqueness and beauty of Ontario's vast open spaces and natural and built cultural and heritage resources. People and places are connected through quality, diverse, safe, accessible and environmentally sensitive urban, rural and wilderness trails, for recreational enjoyment, active living and tourism development."
The trails strategy will encompass not only bicycle paths, but hiking, snowmobiling, ATV and other recreational trails, as well as waterways. The resulting paths are not likely to be bikeways, as in Quebec, but mixed-use trails.
Sectoral workshops on such things as the tourism value of a trails network were held in Toronto last winter; public consultations took place across the province in February and March, and the government's strategy is to be announced sometime this summer.
"The information we received at the consultation sessions and workshops is being distilled and used to complete the trails strategy," according to Gary Wheeler, a ministry spokesman.
In Ontario, the bike path from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Cornwall grew out of a Royal Commission on the future of the Toronto waterfront established in 1988 under former Toronto mayor David Crombie. The original idea was to make the Toronto waterfront accessible to people.
"When they started to look at the Toronto waterfront, they realized they had to look at the whole greater Toronto bio-
region, which took us from Burlington
to Trenton," said Vicki Barron, executive director of the Waterfront Regeneration Trust, the group that manages what has become the Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail and Greenway.
"One of the things that was recommended was that a trail be built to get the people as close to the water as possible. When the Royal Commission wound up, the province of Ontario created a special-purpose agency to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission."
The waterfront trail grew out of that.
It is not a single trail, but a patchwork made up of bits and pieces of municipal trails that have been joined and given a single identity. It is multi-purpose and not just for cyclists.
"It has a consistent brand image and it is completely signed," said Barron. "And if you go on our website (waterfronttrust.com) you will see all of the maps."
Though the trail is considered complete in that it is already possible to bike from Niagara to Brockville, Barron said much work remains to be done because in many areas the designated path is not in the best of locations. For example, between Trenton and Belleville, the trail is Highway 2, "which is not the final alignment, but it's what we have to work with right now.
"It's an opportunity-driven trail, so we never expropriate, and its ultimate goal is to be as close to the lake as environmentally feasible," she said.
"We believe that in the fullness of time, that will happen. Right now there are spots where there is an interim route, and as opportunities come up then the trail will be moved to a final route."
But enough is completed to open the trail now all the way to Quebec.
That connectivity is happening in other places: For example, a bike path along an old rail line from Riviere-du-Loup on the Lower St. Lawrence connects with a path in New Brunswick that runs to Edmundston, providing an official Quebec connection to New Brunswick.
Other Canadian paths connect with similar paths through the U.S.: It is now possible, for example, to cycle around Lake Ontario, or from Montreal to Florida.
If the creation of an inter-provincial network of bike paths seems to have happened under most people's radar, it's because it is often the work of individual municipalities.
How it happened in Levis, Que., across the St. Lawrence from Quebec City, is a good example.
More than a decade ago, Canadian National announced it would be abandoning a rail line that ran along the St. Lawrence in Levis.
This was prime waterfront land, and the rail line -- one of the oldest in Quebec -- had for more than a century prevented development of any kind along much of the Levis waterfront.
Robert Cooke, a Levis city planner, said the municipality acted quickly to take over the land and prevent it from being snapped up by developers. With the collaboration of Quebec's Ministry of Transport, which is the land's official owner, and with money from such things as the federal Millennium Fund, they put together a proposal for a 14-kilometre-long multi-use path.
Their willingness to be part of the Route Verte helped them get provincial financial support.
"It was a financial patchwork involving different partners," he said.
Then, said Cooke, they undertook a long round of public consultations that lasted the better part of a decade before the path opened in 2001.
"The city's position was clear: 'We will give the land back to the citizens and with universal accessibility,'" said Cooke.
The same city-by-city approach is what created the Lake Ontario waterfront trail.
"It's been very modestly done," said Barron. "It was done to serve local needs and in a lot of cases the trail has become the most popular recreation facility.
"Say in the case of the city of Mississauga, the trail is more popular than the arenas, the sports centres, everything. It's the No. 1 recreation amenity."
Meanwhile, Ottawa, with its extensive network of bike paths, is not yet officially connected to the growing new networks. Though there is consistent signage on NCC paths on both sides of the river, there's no indication in Ottawa that by crossing the Ottawa River you get onto the Route Verte. And east of the city, there's not yet a link between the city network and a new pathway opened across Prescott-Russell last year. The Prescott-Russell path eventually hopes to be a link between Ottawa and Quebec.
The city of Ottawa is in the final stages of developing its first cycling plan, which will include a future network of cycling facilities, a 20-year construction schedule, and policies and programs to get the most from infrastructure investments. Following a year of consultations, a draft of the plan was submitted to members of the city's roads and cycling advisory committee several weeks ago. It will be released to the public on the city's website this month.
"We're just in the process of making adjustments to it so hopefully it will go to transportation committee in September," said Diane Dupuis, chair of the roads and cycling advisory committee.
Dupuis said the plan is focused almost entirely on the city and makes little mention of connecting to other paths.
"Personally, I think it's a no-brainer that Ottawa should be part of this," said Dupuis. "We need to sell Ottawa as a cycling destination because we have an incredible network of multi-use pathways in the city. We have to be able to connect it to other tourist destinations.
"We need political will," she said. "I don't want Ottawa to be isolated."
Daniel Drolet is an Ottawa writer.
