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'We're just about there': About five kilometres of bike lanes needed to complete the Greater Niagara Circle Route

Matthew Van Dongen

The St. Catharines Standard

Monday, May 08, 2006 - 01:00

Local News - Just a little farther.

About five kilometres of bike lanes, in fact, will close a $10-million circle, 15 years in the making.

Bruce Timms can almost taste the end.

He expects it to be sweet -- much like the first winery stop on his annual fundraising trek around the Greater Niagara Circle Route.

"We're just about there," the St. Catharines regional councillor said on Sunday, looking over a regional cycling route map.

"We're going to walk the last unfinished section along the lakeshore today."

Timms is the fundraising chairman of the circle route, a 161-kilometre paved path winding all the way around the region.

The path follows the Welland Canal from St. Catharines, through Thorold to Port Colborne.

There it joins the Friendship Trail on the way to Fort Erie, before winding along the Niagara River Parkway to Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The last section between the popular tourist town and the Garden City is also the last hurdle.

Specifically, about five kilometres of Lakeshore Road, between Four Mile Creek Road and Townline Road, are without bike lanes.

You can still cycle it, points out Timms, but the traffic is a little close for comfort.

"That could still be a million-dollar project," conceded Timms, noting the stretch of road is narrow and lacking a shoulder.

"We had $500,000 budgeted for, it but it was bounced out of the (regional) budget until next year."

After more than a decade of waiting, Timms isn't particularly impatient.

Thousands of biking, walking and in-line skating tourists already blanket the usable portions of the trail every summer, he said.

The biggest challenge -- a pedestrian bridge across the third Welland Canal in Allanburg -- was crane-lifted into place in February.

And if trail engineers could do that, said Timms, they can do anything.

"Just the sheer number of stakeholders involved made that a challenge," he said.

Trail organizers had to meet the needs of the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. The federal Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans. The City of Thorold. Even Ontario Power Generation.

The last partner, in fact, needed engineers to raise the height of the bridge by two metres to allow a dredging vessel to pass underneath.

Two cranes also spent most of a day trying to place the 60-metre, 50-tonne bridge from on high.

A federal provincial grant was needed to pay for the $400,000 link.

Put in perspective, a bike lane doesn't look so hard.

The trail has overcome other hardships, said Thorold Coun. Fred Neale.

Each municipality had to scrape together money for the multimillion-dollar project.

Organizers hoped to have it ready for the international canals conference in 2004, but it didn't happen.

But with the lake-to-lake section scheduled for an official opening May 27, individual communities are already celebrating the success of the trail, Neale said.

On Saturday, Thorold hosted its annual circle trek day, raising money for a series of murals being painted on industrial buildings along the canal at Lock 7.

Timms also expected to do some fundraising Sunday with a planned walk from Lock 7 through St. Catharines to -- ideally -- a winery somewhere along Lakeshore Road.

He plans to walk the entire route before the May 27 opening.

For more information, visit www.greaterniagaracircletrek.com

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