sche
Active Member
^^^
If you go on Google Maps and look around the Netherlands, you see off-road bike trails all over the place. They are usually direct, often grade separated or have signal priority at crossings, and well integrated with the rest of the cycling network.
Really, the mentality with these off-road trails needs to just shift from being "recreational trails" to being real transportation routes. When we start recognizing these corridors as actual transportation assets, many things become no-brainers. Things like providing robust road crossing options (ahem, Beltline at Bathurst), direct routings (instead of meandering paths), separate paths for pedestrians and cyclists, and continuity over rail lines, river valleys, and highways. Pedestrian and cycling routes are really not that expensive compared to other projects.
Our trails in river valleys might always be purely recreational due to the topography. However, routes like the hydro corridors, the Belt Line, the path beside Eg West, and the W Toronto Raipath have real potential as commuter cycling highways (just the hydro corridors would connect NYCC, UTSC, York U, ECLRT, FWLRT, Kipling, Kennedy, Lawrence East, Finch, Finch West, and Old Cummer GO). They just don't perform as such right now because of poor design resulting from this recreational trail mentality.
