Today's Globe & Mail has an article about the possible future extension of the West Toronto Railpath.
A few quotes from the article:
A completed trail “would be amazing,” said Daniel Egan, manager of the city’s cycling infrastructure and programs. “What’s in place now doesn’t really go anywhere, but you can get a sense of what’s possible. ... You don’t need much imagination to understand how important it could be.”
But the completion of the trail into downtown is likely several years off, and still faces significant design and construction hurdles.
But if it is to become more than just a recreational trail, and open up a new commuting route for cyclists, the southern portion of the trail down to King and Strachan needs to be completed. That depends on whether room can be carved out alongside the rail corridor that is being expanded to provide more frequent GO train service and a rail link to the airport.
Metrolinx, the government agency planning the GO expansion, says it will try to make room for the railpath alongside its tracks. The city is willing to pick up the tab for construction costs, and will accommodate the trail on adjacent land or streets in the sections where it can’t be accommodated on rail land. And the grassroots group Friends of West Toronto Railpath, which pushed for years to get the path under way, is lobbying hard and helping with the design of the extended path.
You can read the complete article online at the Globe & Mail website.
Comments
hamish (not verified)
West end needs Bloor ahead of the Railpath
Sat, 05/08/2010 - 11:14In an ideal world, we'd have both - but my sense from crash data and even some origin/destination data of 20 years ago, we really need the east-west safety eg. Bloor St. ahead of really costly and less direct rail trail, where we haven't really thought of using the corridor for sub-regional transit, at least not recently. The highest and best use of that corridor I think is for transit: either a busway, or a Light Rail into the core via Front St., and let's repaint Bloor St. between Dundas St. W. and link to Harbord via Ossington this summer - and why hasn't this been on agendas? In an ideal world, we'd have both Rail Trail and Bloor and other east-west connectivity, and maybe the way to do the Rail trail is to have the bikes atop an LRT.
This point-of-view is likely unpopular with some - oh well...
Rick Risemberg (not verified)
Railpath & Bloor
Sat, 05/08/2010 - 11:52I've been following these developments a bit from down in LA....
Generally down here we've been trying to put bikepaths along dedicated LRT ROWs wherever possible; our stations tend to be far apart, so even transit riders will bring bikes with them for the "last mile." I've seen as many as seven bicycles on the little Gold Line trains. Presume your GO trains will allow full-sized bikes? If not, fight for that first, but definitely try to get a rail-adjacent bike path. LRTs generally connect important destinations that folsk will also want to bike to, and it will usually be quicker to take a bike path between two destinations than to wait for the train, which is faster for longer trips.
I agree that your lanes along a dense commercial corridor such as Bloor should take precedence, though; they will get more immediate use and will generate a faster payback to the community, which can then be used to justify future projects.
What are you doing to provide bike parking in areas such as Bloor? If you can't lock safely up when you get there, the path itself isn't much use.
BTW I've been using one of the Bloor Street studies to support bike projects here in LA.