Overpass detour fails to impress cycling group
Head of Kelowna Area Cycling Coalition calls for paving of railway corridor to provide safe route to UBCO
The abandoned railway corridor between central Kelowna and UBC Okanagan should be paved as quickly as possible to ensure people can bike safely to the campus, the Kelowna Area Cycling Coalition says.
Current plans by the city are to develop the railway corridor only as a crushed gravel trail for its 48-kilometre length between Kelowna and Vernon.
“To not have a proper, paved path for cyclists to use to get to the university, it’s almost embarrassing,” coalition president Skye Chataway said Tuesday.
“We’re spending millions of dollars to widen Highway 97 for drivers, but we still expect cyclists to use gravel and dirt roads?” Chataway said. “That’s just not right.”
Federal and municipal politicians held an event Tuesday to mark the opening of a short stretch of a four-metre-wide path that will let cyclists use Bulman Road to detour under a dangerous stretch of Highway 97 as they head to the university.
The highway overpass above the railway corridor has no shoulders, and cyclists have complained for years about having to suddenly squeeze into traffic lanes with fast-moving cars and trucks.
“This is a start in making things safer for cyclists, but so much more could be done and should be done,” Chataway said of the ribbon-cutting for the new path.
The urgency of providing a safe cycling route to UBCO is underscored by a court ruling last week that prevents cyclists from continuing to use Curtis Road, in the Glenmore Valley, to reach the campus, Chataway said.
“The Supreme Court of B.C. has suspended all access to the UBC Okanagan campus via the Curtis Road private easement west of campus,” the university states on its website.
A long-awaited extension of John Hindle Drive, from Glenmore Road to the university, won’t open until at least the fall of 2017. Although that will improve cycling options, riders will still have to share the road with vehicles.
During the road’s construction period, cyclists headed to the university will even be blocked from using an old irrigation flume right-of-way as an informal way to reach the campus, the UBCO website says.
So, by far the best option to make university-bound cycling safer is to immediately hard-surface the railway corridor from central Kelowna to UBCO, Chataway said.
“That should be a priority project,” he said.
“We can understand maybe leaving the rest of the trail, from the university up to Vernon, as crushed gravel because that would primarily be a recreational trail. But paving the part of the railway corridor through Kelowna to the university would be a fraction of the cost of building roads for cars, and it would give hundreds of cyclists who ride to the university a safe and direct way to get there every day.”
The new path is said to cost $1.1 million.