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The long and winding Trail

By COREY LAROCQUE

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 02:00 Niagara Falls Review

Local News -

NIAGARA FALLS – City council voted to proceed with a modified Millennium Trail, yet its bid to find a compromise satisfied some of the trail’s critics, but alienated the trails and bikeways committee that has championed the project for a decade.

“I think it was a good compromise,” said Julie Dunseith, a Ronnie Crescent resident who organized her neighbours to oppose a plan that would have put the southern portion of the trail behind their back yards. “The people in the city got a trail – those who want one – and the residents concerns were taken into consideration,” Dunseith said after Monday’s council meeting.

But a series of seven votes on four segments of the proposed trail left some members of the public unsure about what had happened.

“I haven’t a clue what they did,” said John Anstruther, the chairman of the trails and bikeways committee. Faced with possible alignment changes, that committee maintained the trail should be built as it had been planned.

Situating long sections of the 10-kilometre trail on city streets falls short of what the committee wanted.

Anstruther had started the meeting saying if the city isn’t prepared to build a genuine bike trail, they might as well disband the committee.

“The bottom line is they didn’t vote for a trail. They voted to put it on the streets,” said Anstruther.

Monday’s meeting was billed as a do-or-die decision for the Millennium Trail after nearly a year of controversy. Ald. Wayne Campbell said in the spring if the city was not prepared to complete the trail from north to south, there was no point continuing the process.

After seven votes and two hours of debate, here’s how council voted to develop the Millennium Trail:

• Phase 1 was built in 1999 along the west side of Ontario Power Generation’s hydro canal from Lundy’s Lane to McLeod Road.

• Phase 2, the controversial section, will now go on the west side of the canal. Council set a maximum of $350,000 for the cost of a bridge needed at the south end.

• Phase 3 will run along the canal’s west side north from Whirlpool Road to Morrison Street.

• Phase 4 is to run along the canal between Thorold Stone Road to Drummond Road near the corner of Morrsion Street.

• Phase 5 between Morrison Street and Royal Manor Drive will use city streets on Carolyn Avenue, Dawson Street and Dorchester Road. Original plans had it running between the canal and homes on Carolyn Avenue.

• Council made no decision about Phase 6, which was proposed for the canal’s west side between Royal Manor Drive and Lundy’s Lane.

“I’ll just leave it. People will find their own way,” said Ald. Janice Wing after failing to get a compromise for Phase 6 on the table.

It was council’s treatment of phases 5 and 6 that lost the trail and bikeway committee’s support.

“I’m resigning because they don’t need me anymore,” Anstruther said.

A previous long-standing chairman Clyde Carruthers had also resigned earlier this year, partly out of frustration over the way the issue was handled.

Campbell, one of the strongest backers of the trail, said it would be “fiscally irresponsible” to build the section south of McLeod Road on the west side of the canal. Last year Ontario Power Generation informed the city, the west side of the canal would not be available because the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority has plans to build another canal in that area. OPG told the city they can build the trail in that area, but might have to tear it out if the new canal is built.

That revelation threw the trail’s future into disarray, creating one of the most divisive issues council has seen this term.

“This trail represents, in my estimation, something far greater than a bicycle path or trail. It represents a quality of life issue,” Campbell said.

But Wing said council’s priorities should be in maintaining its infrastructure.

She referred to a report that says Niagara Falls should be spending $7 million a year to keep up its roads. In 2005, the city budgeted $4 million.

Though the committee lost, the changes satisfy south-end residents who were concerned about having a trail in their yards. It would have removed their privacy and created an isolated where crime and vandalism might occur, they argued.

“You’re putting us out there like sitting ducks,” said Ronnie Crescent resident Trudy Wiken, urging council not to put the trail on the canal’s east side.