Tuesday, October 29, 2019

My winter route just got an upgrade

I helped a couple of friends move last weekend: they've moved to the apartment buildings just off Brookfield. Brookfield happens to be part of my winter route to work, so I was pleased to notice, after a couple of trips between their old place and the new, that there's a two-way cycle track on Brookfield that wasn't there before.

In the winter, I have to take this route: the Experimental Farm isn't plowed and neither is the Rideau River pathway. I have to take side streets through Alta Vista, cross the highway and train tracks on the connection between the Sawmill Creek path and Brookfield, then ride along that until it turns into Hog's Back Road and take the sidewalk beside Hog's Back to the locks.

Brookfield is one of the nasty parts of my winter route: it's not super busy but traffic on it is very fast, and it's no fun to ride on in either direction. And now, there will be a multi-user, two-way bike path, cleared in winter, between Riverside and the traffic circle. I was excited, so I went to ride along it today to check out the connections.

You still have to ride the sidewalk between Hog's Back Falls and Riverside (apparently that's getting converted to an official MUP in a year or two) and getting onto the cycle track at Riverside still requires you to use the pedestrian crosswalk, as does getting from the end of the Brookfield track and across the traffic circle (there will apparently be a connection but they had to rethink it on discovering some buried cables). But, it is meant to be kept plowed to "sidewalk standard" in the winter and it will take out one high-alert stretch of my commute, so yay!

A review in video form:

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