I read the draft plan…

I read the draft plan briefly and support the initiatives contained in it. I live in a rural setting with many small community in south western Ontario near the north shore of lake Erie's and of course the cycle friendly promoted waterfront trail.

I would like to see smaller municipality incorporate cycling into there road / trial planning as new roads are improved or reworked. there should be support for these types of infrastructure improvement that fit into the plans long term goals even though they don not have a significant population base..

Case in point is the waterfront trail net that passes thru and buy the John E.. Pearce provincial park on the shore of lake Erie at Wallace town Ontario. it has about 4 km of unimproved gravel road as it heads east from the park. As of this week the road had not even been properly graded but yet it has share the road signs. in another instance a existing 50 year wide road within our community was reworked rebuilt last year. The road connects several open spaces school etc. to a downtown area. it was actually narrowed when rebuilt and no bike lanes etc. added ? So there must be some action thru either monetary existing infrastructure funding etc. to require county and local levels of government to follow provincial and country wide guidelines. Similarly adjacent to this reworked road a new subdivision and a existing park- no pass way bike corridors/paths with the subdivision pans to get to a existing trail path within the park? in other words in my opinion a very narrow short sighted plan in regards to a cycle network on local level.

They must be given either encouragement/requirement for planning or thru monetary incentive to at least include this in there long term planning guidelines.

I also live adjacent to a abandoned rail corridor that runs thru most of the existing county urban areas. Initially in the local cycling initiatives utilization of these right of was was discussed for trail and bike networks. As far as I can tell most of this has dropped of the map except for in the one larger urban center of St. Thomas.

The road bed was designed with a excellent grade and in most cases still has the ballast left intact which is a opportunity to get trial building material very economically and when gone must be started from scratch again. In another instance of what I see as a lack of coordinated planning I am involved with the Ministry of Natural Resources within the John E. Pearce provincial park at Wallacetown. As part for a heritage group that looks after a museum and trail network thru the park. We are in the process of developing a new trail network with in the park( 2k). it would make sense to have this network to be cycle friendly or eligible for funding thru the mto initiatives?. There should be cooperation between local , provincial dept./ministry to facilitate this kind of development. This trail will be adjacent or within sight of the waterfront trail and trans canada trail. This type of long term cooperation and planning in my opinion results in increased local economic activity, healthier citizens, more desirable places to live. and tourism .

As part of my involvement in the property maintenance field I have the opportunity to observe first hand a comparison of cycle friendly initiatives, ,trial road designs when we travel thru urban areas in London, St. Thomas, and some smaller communities in Ontario.

For location references I have added the three local web links for the municipality, provincial park and the heritage group I am involved/live in. The waterfront trail and trans canada trail both run adjacent to this park and museum facility .

backuspagehouse.ca/ www.ontarioparks.com/park/johnepearce.ca

www.duttondunwich.on.ca

[Original Comment ID: 209436]