Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail News

An Ezine Produced by the Waterfront Regeneration Trust

CIBC* COIP*The Lake Ontario waterfront municipalities, conservation authorities and community groups*The Eastern Lake Ontario – St. Lawrence River Waterfront Working Group MapArt* Niagara Freewheelers Bicycle Touring Club* Regional Niagara Bicycling Committee St. Lawrence Cement* Tilley Endurables

September 2006

In this issue:

• Trail to be Featured on Kitchener Radio Program
• Waterfront Trail Posters Now Available
• Trust Wraps Up 2006 End-to-End Tour
• Feature on Trail Users:
  • This Summer’s Website Stats
  • User Response to Starter’s Kit
  • Waterfront Trail by Foot – Stoney Creek to Toronto

Upcoming Conferences and Community Events:

• Velo Quebec’s “Bikeway Planning and Development” Technical Training Session
  
  

Trail to be Featured on Kitchener Radio Program

On Wednesday October 11th the Waterfront Trail will be featured on Kitchener Waterloo’s CKWR 98.5 FM’s KW Magazine Radio Program at 6:30PM. The Trust’s, Nikki Rendle will be on the show as part of our ongoing promotion of the Waterfront Trail and Starter’s Kit. This provides a great opportunity for us to reach an audience outside of the Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence river watershed area.

Waterfront Trail Posters Now Available

The Trust is pleased to announce that the popular Waterfront Trail trailhead sign artwork is now available for sale in a poster-sized format! These beautiful signs depict regional sections of the Trail, highlighting local amenities and tourist attractions. The posters would be a great resource to hang on the wall in local municipal and tourism offices for visitors and residents alike.
For more information on the signs or to place your order, contact David Arcus at (416) 943-8080 or info@wrtrust.com.

Trust Wraps Up 2006 End-to-End Tour

The Trust would like to extend our thanks to all of our waterfront partners who came out to meet us and/or ride with us along the Trail this summer. On September 7- 9 the Trust wrapped up our last leg of our summer-long Trail Manager’s End-To-End Tour, riding from Adolphustown to Brockville.

This year’s tour was amazing! It was a real treat to ride the entire 650 km route and see all of the remarkable changes and improvements that have taken place since our first ride in 2002, including the new section east of Brockville. Congratulations to all the waterfront municipalities for their leadership and dedication in working towards regenerating their waterfronts through the development of the Waterfront Trail! We can’t wait to see the improvements and enhancements that will take place over the next 4 years.

The trip also served as a trial run in advance of the re-opening of the Trail in 2007. Next year we will be celebrating the 15th anniversary of “Regeneration”, the report that started it all rolling with its recommendation to establish the Waterfront Trail. In addition, the Tour provided us with a great opportunity to gather input from our partners regarding innovative trail design, which will be used to update the Trail Design Guidelines created in 1996.

Feature on Trail Users

It’s been a busy and exciting summer for us at the Trust and all this activity is paying off with continuing growing interest in the Waterfront Trail. We thought we’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the feedback we’ve been receiving from Trail users.


This Summer’s Website Stats

This summer our website saw more activity than ever before. In the month of July, our site received a record 512,388 hits (compared to 331,736 in 2005) and 487,378 hits recorded in August (as compared to 326,027 in 2005). These stats continue to show that more and more people are discovering the Trail and using our website as a resource to explore what the Trail has to offer.

User Response to the Starter’s Kit

On August 28th, 2006, Nikki Rendle from the Trust appeared on Breakfast Television to promote the Waterfront Trail and the “Tastes of the Trail” Starter’s Kit. Over the next few days, the office was swamped with phone and email requests for the Kit. We could hardly keep up with the demand.

So far, we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the Starter’s Kits. Here are some comments we recently received:

Port Credit Trip:

“This portion inside Mississauga has beautiful views of the lakeshore parks. The trail was very well maintained with high cyclist usage.”

Whitby/Oshawa Trip:

“Port Whitby is a nice and comfortable place with good facilities. I enjoyed the quiet environment and highly recommend cyclists to try this part of the Waterfront Trail.”

Port Dalhousie Trip:

“This is one of my most favorite parts of the Waterfront Trail… It is a beautiful place with a beach and many pubs. The twin green lighthouses are the most beautiful lighthouses I have ever seen along the Waterfront Trail.”

You can find an online version of the Starter’s Kit on our website (www.waterfronttrail.org - just click on the icon in the top left corner that reads “Get Started on the Waterfront Trail”). Please be sure to give us your feedback and comments about the kits by clicking on “Tell us about your trip.”

If you would like a hard copy of the kit, please contact David Arcus at (416) 943-8080 or info@wrtrust.com.

The Waterfront Trail by Foot – Stoney Creek to Toronto

We recently received an email from a Pat Ferguson who wrote to tell us of her walk from Stoney Creek in Hamilton to Toronto. We thought we’d include some excerpts from her letter to give a walker’s perspective on the Trail:

“On the first day, we started to walk the trail at 7:45 am on Grays Rd., Stoney Creek, and reached Port Credit the first day by 9:00 pm… [We] continued on our way by 8:45 am the next day. We touched the bottom of the CN Tower at 5:00 pm.”

“What a FANTASTIC trip!! The view along the trail was just amazing! It was hard to believe we were in Ontario.”

“The waterfront trail is a such a great way to connect from one city to another with spectacular views. I would have to say that this was one of my BEST trips ever, in my travels.”

Upcoming Conferences and Community Events:

Velo Quebec’s “Bikeway Planning and Development” Technical Training Session

For any of you who missed the Trust’s 2005 training session, here’s another chance to catch Marc Jolicoeur. Thanks to Velo Quebec for providing us with the following announcement:
Technical training

BIKEWAY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

This session is designed for all those involved in cycling as a mode of transportation or recreation: transportation professionals, planners and developers, parks and recreation officials, etc. It is a one-day course including a theoretical component and a field trip. This training will allow the participant to better understand the major steps involved in bikeway planning and development projects, and to learn the basics about facility design and operation.

The trainer, Marc Jolicoeur, has been research coordinator at Vélo Québec since 1995. Author of the Technical Handbook of Bikeway Design, he has served on numerous committees on bikeway safety and standards. He also coordinates technical support for the development of the Route verte bicycle network. A professional engineer, he has been involved in transportation for over 15 years. An avid cyclist since childhood, he is a regular bicycle commuter in Montréal.

Upcoming Training Sessions in 2006
Montreal, September 28 (in French)
Saguenay, October 12 (in French)
Ottawa, October 17 (in English)

For more information, visit: http://www.velo.qc.ca/bikewaydesign/index.lasso?page=training

To register, visit the Velo Quebec website: http://www.velo.qc.ca/bikewaydesign/training_form.lasso

Cheers!
Vicki Barron, Executive Director;
Marlaine Koehler, Program Director;
and Nikki Rendle, Editor Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail News

The Waterfront Regeneration Trust
372 Richmond Street West, Suite 308
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1X6
Tel: 416-943-8080
Fax: 416-943-8068
Email: nr@wrtrust.com
www.waterfronttrail.org

Visit www.waterfronttrail.org to download 90 online colour maps of the Waterfront Trail, from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Brockville!

Thank You to our Supporters!:

• CIBC
• The Lake Ontario waterfront municipalities, conservation authorities and community groups
• The Eastern Lake Ontario­St.Lawrence Waterfront Working Group
• MapArt
• Niagara Freewheelers Bicycle Touring Club
• Regional Niagara Bicycling Committee
• St. Lawrence Cement
• Tilley Endurables
• The Trust would also like to thank the Canada-Ontario Infrastructure Program (COIP) for its generous support of the 51 projects that comprise the Lake Ontario Waterfront Investment Program.