‘Pump track’ pitched for Mountain

The budding Balfour-Hill Park Neighbourhood Association is looking at lobbying the city for a bicycle pump track similar to the one at Gage Park.

“It would be well-used,” said Sarah Warry-Poljanski, who has been working to formally organize the neighbourhood group for the past year or so.

The central Mountain resident said she got the idea for the track after seeing one in Toronto that was busy with cyclists. The idea seemed to have the support of the approximately 12 people who attended a Balfour-Hill Park neighbourhood meeting at the Sackville Hill Seniors Recreation Centre recently, she said.

A pump track is a recreational play space for cyclists featuring a continuous loop of berms and rollers.

Cyclists use a pumping motion with their upper and lower body to get around the clay (with a granular base) surface.

Michelle Williams, communications officer in the city manager’s office, said the 1,100-square-metre Gage Park track, which was installed in 2015, cost $150,000 for design, construction and a year of maintenance.

Maintenance costs are about $20,000, Williams said, and the track is well-used, with more than 300,000 laps recorded so far.

Before the Balfour-Hill Park group can start writing up their proposal and begin looking for funding, they need to become an official body.

Warry-Poljanski said she will be looking to hold a meeting in the next two months to elect an executive and set up the organization.

She said flyers will be going out to residents — between Upper Wentworth Street and Upper James Street, and from Mohawk Road East to Fennell Avenue East — in the coming weeks to inform them and gather input on having a pump track built in the area.