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Maps Updated!

After all the talk, this is the best council could do?

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 02:00 Niagara Falls Review

Editorial - After a year of talking, planning, hearing complaints and responding to them, more planning and more talking, you’d think the Millennium Trail would have gotten better, not worse.

Instead, all this wrangling and hand-wringing, climaxing with council finally voting on the issue Monday, has produced a trail with a hole in the middle of it (between Royal Manor Drive and Lundy’s Lane) and a portion where pedestrians and cyclists will be forced onto a busy street scene (Dorchester Road, where there are no bicycle lanes, near Hwy. 420).

Not only that, aldermen – wary of angering a small group of residents south of McLeod Road – chose to spend as much as $350,000 to build a bridge to extend the trail west of the hydro canal below McLeod, instead of east.

That’s a gamble. Ontario Power Generation has already warned the city that land might be needed for a new canal in a few years.

Where’s the leadership?

Where’s the willingness to make the hard decisions?

Aldermen were spooked by complaints from voters whose property would touch on the trail.

Those people feared it would be an invasion of their backyard privacy, a legitimate concern.

But they also talked about it being a hangout for drug users and purse snatchers, that people would be throwing litter into their backyards. They worried teenagers would hold late-night parties, or that a trail-user might fall and be unable to get back up, and then how would help reach them on time?

When a consultant’s report noted the poor shape of roads in Niagara Falls, the trail opponents suddenly became champions of the fight against potholes.

Why spend money on a trail, they said, when our roads are crying out for help?

There were some whose property would touch on the trail who actually looked forward to having it built, and planned to add gates to their back fences for easy access to it.

They lose. And so does the rest of the city.

The way some people talked, you’d think the trail was a back alley in the Bronx with rats rummaging through garbage and drunks and muggers lurking behind every corner.

This is a bike path, for heaven’s sake – a recreation trail for cyclists and walkers.

At least, the trail will be built, and that’s a good thing. But this plan needs a lot of work still.