Plympton-Wyoming doesn’t mind a waterfront trail going through its community, it just doesn’t want it going through residential neighbourhoods.
The Waterfront Trail project wants to put cycling and walking trails all around the Great Lakes. The trail now goes from the Toronto area to Lakeshore near Windsor.
The group hopes have the trail extend to Grand Bend by 2015 encompassing 180 kilometers of trails through Lambton County.
Marlaine Koehler, executive director of the project, asked Plympton-Wyoming council recently if some of the municipality’s roads, including some residential areas near Bright’s Grove, could be used. “Where there are trails we would use existing trails and co-designate them respecting the local branding…where there wasn’t a trail, we used the quietest road.”
But that didn’t sit well with town council.
“We support what you’re doing in principal, but we don’t want to turn our residential streets into a trail,” says Mayor Lonny Napper. “We have residential streets there and million dollar homes, I don’t think the people built the home with the idea their homes would be a tourist attraction.”
And Councilor Netty McEwen objected to the use of Egermont Road – a road she says is too narrow for the cyclist who are there now. “There are a lot of cyclist on those roads and they’re the biggest nuisance there is,” she says. “The way they are there nothing but a nuisance.”
Council instead asked Koelhler to bring the route down Lakeshore Road where the two regional parks are located.
And Napper had another idea. “The Howard Watson Trail goes from Sarnia to Camlachie – that would be the way we would want to go,” says Napper.
Plympton-Wyoming sold that portion of the trail to the county because it could afford to extend it to Camlachie.