A group of Grande River Line and Riverview Line residents are seeking to lobby Chatham-Kent Council in hope of stopping a planned 20-kilometre cycling/walking trail along the Thames River west of Chatham.
Jack Parry and Marc Roszell, who live on opposite sides of the river, say cost, logistics and public safety concerns mean council should opt out of the project.
Earlier this month, council approved the Round the River Route Trail project’s design process, committing nearly $1.3 million of the project’s $5.8 million cost.
That amount includes a $325,000 in grant funding under the provincial Ontario Municipal Cycling Infrastructure Program.
Parry, whose family has lived along the road for four generations, said he has “several” problems with the plan.
“Chatham-Kent can’t even afford to fix its bridges or balance a budget and yet council can find $6 million for a bike trail? Someone’s got their priorities messed up.
They say they can take the money out of this budget but they don’t have it in another to fix what’s falling apart. To us taxpayer’s, it’s all coming out of the same jeans, just a different pocket.”
He said he believes councillors were blinded by the provincial grant and the pledge by Commercial Alcohols for $250,000 if the project proceeds.
“They look at what they think is free money and they lose their perspective,” he said. “How can they even think of spending half a million just to figure out where the trail will go? Shouldn’t that tell them something?”
Parry said council is appealing to a narrow interest group and no one from the municipality has even contacted property owners.
“There’s about 14 people who will use this when they could be using all of the green space in the city,” he said. “What we have now are bicycle riders who are a pain in the butt; they have no concern about being hit. Somebody’s going to get killed on this road.”
Marc Roszell said competitive bikers run in packs and this would simply encourage more.
“These are racing enthusiasts; they won’t use the bike paths, they will use the road. If they did use the paths they’d run over some little kid or someone walking.”
Chatham-Kent manager of parks and open spaces Jeff Bray said residents concerns will be addressed during the next phase of planning later this year.
“We met with advocates to determine if there was a need for the project and we spoke with council to see if there was political will,” he said. “The next step is public meetings to determine low-level design.”
Bray said preliminary design work calls for an asphalt trail 1.5 metres wide to be built on the sides of the roads opposite to the river.
“From what we know of the drainage, property ownership issues, hydro poles and transformers, the trail will be on the side of the roads away from the river, he said.
Jack’s wife Jane said there’s “no way” she’d allow a child to use a trail as close to the road as this one appears to be.
“If they put the trail on the farmland side they have to move countless mailboxes and poles. If it’s on the river side there are ditches that have they will have to level. Either way you’re going to have kids a few feet away from transport trucks and farm vehicles on a road where people routinely speed over 80 kilometres per hour. It doesn’t make sense.”
Bray said the actual width of the trail will be determined by how much room exists through available right-of-way.
He said there is no consideration being given to expropriation.
“We have sufficient room within the right-of-way,” he said.
Roszell said he doesn’t believe having a trail that cuts through working farms is proper.
“A lot of the time, the road goes through the farm,” he said. “We need to be able to get back and forth to farm the land. I have semis (transport trucks) to haul corn and wagons to move grain. Sometimes I’m moving upwards of 30 tons and now I have to do it with a bike path in the middle?”
Both men say they support the concept of hiking and biking but only where it makes sense.
Parry said he called his municipal councillor and was told that no one else is objecting.
“If that’s true, it’s because they don’t know what’s going on because they haven’t been contacted,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are concerned.”
He’s asking that anyone interested in learning more about the project contact him at 519-354-0694.
Roszell said he knows of farmers who have to drive around to another concession to work their land because the municipality won’t repair bridges in rural areas.
“I think the rural councillors need to take a stand and remember that we can’t just have things for Chatham residents,” he said.
Parry agreed, noting, “Chatham people get the cookies and we get the crumbs. That’s just the way things are done around here.”
Wheatley has been asking for a proper bike path from uptown down to the beach for the past 4 years and have been promised it would happen, then get told by a councillor that it's not going to happen. We already have the base for the bike path- could be done very reasonably….what the heck- give it to the people who have been asking for the path! It should be a no-brainer.
Connect uptown Wheatley to the public beach so kids aren't riding on the road.
We’re on it Deb. We’ll be meeting in Wheatley with C-K’s Coordinator of Active Transportation (Genevieve Champagne) this October to discuss options for closing the gap between Wheatley and its waterfront for cyclists. Stay tuned to our Share the Road – Essex County page for future updates on this initiative.
If it is not to benefit Chatham then Ck councillors are not in favour. We need roads repaired badly in Blenheim and they keep saying it is not in the budget.
Doreen, paved shoulders extend the life of a road and reduces the number of time a road needs to be redone over the years because it moves the weight of heavy vehicles inwards away from the edge – where it first begins to crumble. So it makes financial sense in the long run.
I work a farm on the river in Dover and I have to go around from pain court line to the river because the bridge on the Crow road isn't going to be fixed, and with the equipment I have and the way people drive cars down the road passing me on a bend and they want to add a bike path to the mix that's crazy. Build it in chatham in the city
First point: only 14 cyclists. What;s the current turnout for the Wednesday night ride. At one point there wer 40! Second point: "Not concerned about their safety!" So according to him we like getting run over… not! At the council meeting, he called cylists a nuisance. While I can understand his frustration over bridge repairs; a result in my opinion, of delaying maintenance to keep tax hikes at or near zero, he's grasping for any reason not to build this path. BTW, there are farmers on some of those bikes!
So the problem is the way people drive cars. Agreed.
As for the "build it in Chatham" comment, riders who use that stretch of road come from all over Chatham-Kent and even beyond. It is very common for the "Chatham" group of riders to come across riders from Essex coming into Chatham. Interestingly, if you drive out past Jeanettes Creek into Essex, the first two road signs are; the speed limit, and then a Share the Road. This continues all the way to Windsor. Chatham-Kent is playing catch up when it comes to cyclo-tourism.
Parry needs to realize what a progressive community does!!!
Looking at my tax bill, I probably pay more than enough tax and as I remeber I have just as much right to the roads as a cyclist than any vehicle. You know what a nuisnace is… vehicles that dont respect my right to the road as well. I respect your farm vehicles when I am ont he road, I as a cyclist deserve the same.
But we can make it hard for regular folks to see the beauty of the county and will never know how nice it is really is here. I have seen so much of Chatham Kent on my bike and it has given me a new prespective on how beautiful our county is. This trail would give people things to see and maybe even appriaciate the farms that are there. You want to attract young people here… you need eco tourism. You want to change the obesity rate – give people access to areas to get out and feel safe. But in backwards CK, we dont think that way as this article suggests.
But I am a nuissance, so I dont know anything.
Ask your councillor what happened to the committee of council that suggested that route to the beach, a committee that discussed that route time and again, a committee that was told there was a plan in place to make it happen, 4 years ago. It disbanded itself because council kept saying "no" even though every route proposed was included in a master plan, a plan accepted unanimously by council.
Makes me wonder if he knows what kind of people cycle? We must all be thugs – not farmers and doctors and engineers and sales people and managers and teachers and business owners and bankers and repairmen and electricians… Sure hope that bubble he's living in doesn't burst!