With multiple cyclist fatalities in the news recently, the G2G Rail Trail group believes it's more important than ever to advocate for safe cycling connections in and out of Guelph.
G2G stands for Guelph to Goderich, a trail spanning 132 km and connecting 17 municipalities. The organization maintains about 65 per cent of it.
But the trail isn’t properly connected in Guelph, leaving cyclists to ride on the road and take confusing detours through traffic.
It technically starts downtown Guelph, but most drive to the Silvercreek entrance to avoid the detours; cyclists coming from out of town typically stop short of the Guelph portion of the trail, avoiding it altogether.
“This section of the trail is obviously not safe,” said executive director Willow Hall, referring to the gap between Woodlawn Road and Silvercreek Parkway.
Right now, if you start biking on the trail downtown and you get to Woodlawn, you’d turn left, using the multi-use path on Woodlawn towards Silvercreek.
The route takes you to the right through an industrial area to avoid the corner of Silvercreek, “which is not a safe corner for cyclists,” he said.
This route is fine on weekends, but can be dangerous during the week.
That takes you to Silvercreek, but he said most people “aren’t doing that.”
“Most people are starting at the trail out at Silvercreek where the kiosk is, parking there, even though there’s no official parking lot,” and it only fits six or seven cars, limiting how many people can start there.
It’s not necessarily the safest or most accessible route, and finding it can be difficult in the first place, because the signs indicating the route are so small.
G2G has a map outlining the trail clearly, but he said often people don’t know they exist or how to find it.
“There’s an efficacy question whether we should even mark that as a route,” he said. “Because it’s not marked on the road as a shared roadway. It’s just generally unsafe, but it’s the only connection that we can possibly have at the moment.”
An avid cyclist, group advisor Doug Cerson has biked down Silvercreek hundreds of times, “and I am nervous going down Silvercreek every time I ride down there,” he said.
He said recreational cyclists are maybe not as attuned to traffic like a commuter road cyclist, he said, so it’s even more crucial to ensure they have safe pathways away from roads.
One advocate uses a hand cycle, which is low to the ground – he said she wouldn’t even consider biking on Silvercreek from an accessibility perspective.
“She can’t do that because she will get hit by a car,” he said.
Improving the connection would “absolutely” reduce the risk for cyclists and prevent fatalities, he said, because the idea is to take cyclists fully off the roads, creating a safe cycling network that goes from the downtown Trans Canada Trail and out of Guelph.
“Which would open up like 132 km of trail that would be fully connected to downtown Guelph,” he said. “Since the inception of the G2G Rail Trail experience, which is the idea that you’re going from the transportation corridor in downtown Guelph and then on your way out to Lake Huron and Goderich, has always been the idea of a fully accessible, barrier-free experience.”
The project to connect the trails, dubbed Bridging the Gap, has been in the works for the last 10 years or so, during which time they’ve seen some progress – but not enough, Hall said.
For instance, the city is currently working on completing a section of the trail just south of the cemetery, but it will still end at Woodlawn.
The connection has also been mentioned as the number one priority in the Guelph Trails Master Plan, he said, but a large portion of the connecting trail exists within city-owned property, where there are competing private interests as well.
He did say, though, that the group was recently given $75,000 to fund a survey and an engineering report to determine what the trail will actually look like, creating the framework around actually building it.
The study is being conducted alongside the Trans Canada Trail and the city.
“There seems to be some momentum in the right direction, but there are competing interests,” he said. “We’re trying to make it a reality.”
The Guelph Junction has said it’s not safe to put a cycling trail next to tracks, though there are trails running alongside tracks elsewhere in Guelph.
The concern for Willow is that while they can take preventative measures to make trails along the tracks safe, it would be safer than the routes people are taking currently.
He noted given the number of people using the trail, it should be made a priority: Preliminary data shows in the Kissing Bridge Trailway section, everything West from Silvercreek, there are about 100,000 people using the trail annually. The entire trail is just shy of 700,000 people annually, with daily use between 200 to 4,000 individuals.
“We would really like to see this complete before more tragedies happen,” he said.
The group is having a fundraising event called Rock On 4 the G2G Oct. 18 at the Red Chevron with a fish and chip dinner and two live bands, ranging from east coast tribute music to “good old rock and roll.”
Cerson started planning the event in August to raise funds for their cause, but since the recent death of Susan Bard and other cyclists in nearby communities, he said the need to raise awareness and get this trail connected is more important than ever.
There won’t be any presentations or speeches, it’s just a chance to get out and have some fun, he said, while supporting the organizations.
Any funds raised from the event will go back to the organization to support the advocacy of a safe connection from Guelph to Goderich.
