Council here has given approval in principle to a Wellington County-wide plan for a $24 million trail system that calls for more than $1 million in trail upgrades in Minto.
Karen Armstrong, vice-chair of the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph In Motion committee, and county planner Sarah Wilhelm presented Minto council with an update on the Wellington County Active Transportation Plan on Nov. 6.
Armstrong and Wilhelm provided details on the proposal, which calls for the creation of a 1,000-kilometre trail system throughout the county over the next 20 years. County-wide, about 30 per cent of the trails will be off-road, with the remaining 70 per cent making use of roadways and paved shoulders.
“In Minto, all three of your urban centres will be on either a spine or a loop system,” connected to the county trails,” said Wilhelm. At the north end, Minto’s trails will be extended to connect with the Bruce County Rail Trail.
The White’s Junction trail, which begins in Palmerston would be part of the system. However, noted Wilhelm, “it’ doesn’t pick up Harriston’s Greenway Trail because that’s looked at as a secondary system.”
Among the top priorities in the first 10 years of the plan is to connect the White’s Junction Trail into Harriston, said Wilhelm. Connections between Harriston and Mount Forest, through the Pike Lake area, and between Clifford and Mount Forest, would also be early priorities in the plan.
While the county would spend just over $1.18 million on trail upgrades in Minto over the life of the plan, the town would contribute just $43,620 over 20 years.
Minto’s commitment in the first 10 years of the plan would be $11,600, “or just over $1,000 per year,” notes Wilhelm.
Currently Minto has approximately 10km of major multi-use trails. That would be expanded with an additional 49.2 kilometres of signed routes, 2.1km of on-road routes with marked bicycle lanes, and 20.5km of paved shoulders, for a total of 82km of trail facilities in the town by the end of the project.
Across Wellington, the current 250km of multi-use trails and paved shoulders will be expanded by an additional 750km of new trails and routes. There will also be connections to trail systems in surrounding counties.
“One of the things I like about the plan is that it extends the trail all the way from Palmerton to Harriston,” commented Mayor George Bridge, adding that “from a financial standpoint, I like the fact that it’s broken out over 10 years.
“You can eat an elephant one bite at a time,” he quipped.
