On July 17, Toronto City Council adopted a motion submitted by councillor Mike Colle requesting that city staff review opportunities to connect the York Beltline Trail with the Kay Gardner Beltline Park, thus creating a continuos walking, jogging and cycling path across midtown Toronto.
The Beltline Trail is a nine-kilometre multi-use trail with three sections, the York Beltline, Kay Gardner Beltline and the Ravine Beltline that runs south of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery through Moore Park Ravine.
Colle said that, after reclaiming public land that was fenced off illegally for years, the York Beltline Trail is due to be extended east from Marlee Avenue to Allen Road.
“As a result of that, we’re so close now to finding a link between this extended York Beltline to the existing Kay Gardner Beltline, which is on the other side of the Allen,” said Colle.
Colle’s motion asks staff to consider the feasibility of a pedestrian bridge between the two trails, which would go over Allen Road, or improvements to an existing bridge 50 metres north of the trail on Elm Ridge Drive.
“Obviously the pedestrian and cycling bridge would be great, but it might be too prohibitive cost-wise at the present time,” said ‘Colle.
“So I’m willing to look at the alternatives of really enhancing the connectivity with the existing path and roadway. We have to widen it and make it safe.”
Colle said that the number of people using the Kay Gardner Beltline is much greater than those using the York Beltline, and due to the lack of a connection between the two, many Kay Gardner Beltline users may not even know the York Beltline exists.
“I want to put that on the radar of our council, our transportation commission, to get some real serious analysis of these options because it’s a golden opportunity to get people to connect east and west,” said Colle, who noted the difficulty of jogging or cycling on nearby Eglinton Avenue.
“It’s a missing cycling link that we could use to get people across that part of the city in a very safe way, but right now there’s a big barrier called the Allen Expressway. So I’m trying to modify that barrier in some way.”
