Is Kelowna Rails with Trail going fail?

[khutchi]

I wrote this letter to a councillor and I thought i'd share it and get feedback if anyone out there is interested in sharing your knowledge/insight/two cents. It's got some length to it so fair warning. Only read if you want to.

To connect pedestrians and cyclists from Kelowna, Lake Country and the North Okanagan by means of a 50km continuous trail is ambitious to say the least. At the time of writing this only ~5% of trips Okanagan residents make are by bicycle so gaining mass appeal in the public as good use of taxpayer dollars is tricky. However, opposition to the trail is almost exclusively made on the basis of funding and there is an old saying in urban planning; “If money is your only issue, you’re on easy street”. This is because funding issues can often be alleviated by private donation, public interest groups, charity events, and other means of fundraising if the idea is good enough. Just this week, there was a seminar on the future sustainability of Harvey Avenue given by the CITE and Imagine Kelowna at the Yacht Club. The tickets were recommended $20 donation with proceeds going to fund the trail. It was a great talk and a neat look at how things are done differently in the Netherlands (a country with more cyclists than motorists!). But besides private donations, and lucky thing for rails with Trails, city council supports the development in its entirety and funding was made available. And to a massive extent. We have paid millions in 2016 for this development and we even paid for Lake country’s portion at a price tag of about $2.5 million. This was more than apparent when we received our financial statements a few weeks ago (May 2017) for the previous year. If you look under "government capital transfers" on page 4, for the first time in 10 years (maybe longer I didn’t go further back) we ran a deficit in this account to a tune of about $1.2 million. Remember this is the part of our budget that concerns moneys transferred from senior governments (Prov/Fed) to city governments for community projects. The only way for a municipal government to run a deficit in this account is if they spend our money in a different city. Talk about a pro-cycling agenda! But this is not likey city council’s true motivation because the argument for a rail trail is more or less a land use one. With the CN rail becoming obsolete and spikes being removed what else can we do with such narrow awkward strips of land? The rail trail was a great solution.

But here’s the problem with the Rail Trail: We never asked ourselves the question : What besides building the trail itself will contribute to the success on the trail?

For me the following the top 3 answers come to mind:

1. Adding residential density directly adjacent to the trail.
2. Adding commercial amenities to supplement the trail experience (Plaza, parks, coffee shops).
3. Maintenance, marketing and overall promotion with community events.

Maintenance and marketing take care of themselves as even the most inept cities tend to remember to do this. Even if we don’t, the “build it and they will come” principle eventually catches up. But the place where we with get the most bang for our buck is in the land use of property immediately adjacent the trail. If you live near a bike trail you are more likely to use it. The same goes for If there are places to stop for lunch or grab a coffee. Thus the city’s number one priority should be conducting an OCP review on all abutting property to make sure we are getting maximum value for the millions we’ve spent on the trail. Adjacent Land should be thought of as part of the trail.

To date no study, adjustments to the OCP, land acquisition, or general plan for surrounding development have been made! And this is a big problem because the amount of land that has not been developed yet around the trail is limited to say the least. And the original designation/zonings made took no account for a bicycle/pedestrian trail being adjacent. Thus the current community plan for these areas make absolutely no sense. With no effort or plan, things rarely work out!

[60-YEARS-in-Ktown]

I think your opinion vastly differs from many bike tourists.
Some will ride Ktown to Vernon and back in a day.
Most will probably camp or get let off in Oyama or Winfield, then ride one leg,and back..the other the next day.
Oyama has a store and maybe more.. Within a kilometer of the trail. Winfield has many things within a Kilometer or near that..
No doubt there will be businesses that rent bikes ir take you to one end so you can ride back, or get picked up.
So Is there really a need for everything to be right near the trail..
I doubt it..bike rides will ride two kilometers out of their way to get what they want..

See you out there in the future..

[khutchi]

I think your opinion vastly differs from many bike tourists.
Some will ride Ktown to Vernon and back in a day.
Most will probably camp or get let off in Oyama or Winfield, then ride one leg,and back..the other the next day.
Oyama has a store and maybe more.. Within a kilometer of the trail. Winfield has many things within a Kilometer or near that..
No doubt there will be businesses that rent bikes ir take you to one end so you can ride back, or get picked up.
So Is there really a need for everything to be right near the trail..
I doubt it..bike rides will ride two kilometers out of their way to get what they want..

See you out there in the future..

Make sense. But i think for it ever to be worth the millions we spent on it , it should be doing something to encourage NEW ridership, not just cater to those of us that already ride and will willingly go out of there way for the trail. However, this is something to be said that those who want to ride already are and those who want to drive will never convert. But never say never , change is slow...

[60-YEARS-in-Ktown]

Let me put it his way..al ot of riders would never ride to Vernon on the highway..
But having a chance to ride on a scenic flat trail with no cars.... There will be lots of takers..

[jasond_71]

Well on our end, Coldstream has already purchased land near the trail for parking and commercial opportunities.
Also, this end of the trail is packed every weekend. I counted 40 cars plus all the people who simply ride or walk to it.
Plus it's not just for riders. Tons of people walk it. I run down from my house and run it.

All your ideas make sense to me. They should aquire some land but I think the busiest part will be coldstream to Lake country.

[khutchi]

It just occurs to me that i provided no context for why i wrote the letter. My bad haha.

I wrote it in regards agenda item 3.2 of May 30th,2017 council meeting concerning a property on that is directly next to the rail trail located at 2800 Hwy 97 N near the recent highway construction.

https://kelownapublishing.escribemeetin ... entId=7157

imagine what sort of commercial amenities could be added to supplement the trail to the west? But the motion was to rezone it to I2(Industrial) with potential future uses include automotive sales, commercial storage, contractor services, equipment rentals, service stations, and others. Not very rail trail inspired

Why was this done? For a number of reasons but more or less because the provincial government decided to six-lane the highway right next to the property resulting in the property having ‘large setbacks’ making the property is not developable (To A1 standards). In other words, the lot is too narrow. If you buy-in to the notion that surrounded area is part of the trail, then the provincial ministry of Transport is competing with our city's posterboy infrastructure project (and it really is our biggest capital project of 2016 next to the police services building).

And why wouldn’t they?! There was a congestion issue in this sector of Harvey and we needed a short term fix. At no time did the municipality make any indication that this conspicuous trail beside the highway was a priority for our community (Despite spending millions of your taxpayer dollars). The OCPs still said what they said years before we decided we wanted the CN Rail to become part of our sustainable transport network. Our MLA in this region, Norm Letnick, even though having served on council for a term himself, has more important issues than pushing progressive anti-car Green-NDPesque issues in the second most car-dependent region in Canada. Especially with an election around the corner. So the highway was six laned, an our opportunity to enhance the Rail Trail is was (in my opinion) gone foreve.

I can't help but feel this will occur over and over again into 2019 until the project is over because our city hall has been lazy in taking this project seriously.

[khutchi]

Well on our end, Coldstream has already purchased land near the trail for parking and commercial opportunities.
Also, this end of the trail is packed every weekend. I counted 40 cars plus all the people who simply ride or walk to it.
Plus it's not just for riders. Tons of people walk it. I run down from my house and run it.

All your ideas make sense to me. They should aquire some land but I think the busiest part will be coldstream to Lake country.

I was riding with a guy yesterday who said you're end of the trail is the best part of the trail. I will definitely have to come check it out

[jasond_71]

Ya I think Kelowna got the worst part of that deal unless they use part of it for a bypass or bike trail to ubco. The kal lake part is entirely on the lake.

[spooker]

Ya I think Kelowna got the worst part of that deal unless they use part of it for a bypass or bike trail to ubco. The kal lake part is entirely on the lake.

Part of the reason that Kelowna is fast-tracking the first section of the trail is to finally make up for not having a good route to UBCO for almost 20 years. They screwed up with that and might just be making up for it.

Kelowna can get a really good city-spanning trail out of it if they actually treat it the right way ... the preliminary design was horrible and makes some bad choices in the name of "cyclist safety" ...

Part of the original evaluation that the Rail Trail Initiative sponsored took into account the numerous commercial entities within a reasonable distance off the proposed path. Opportunities that it was felt people would take advantage of on a bicycle.

I went out to an event for the trail and met a retired woman who owns an adjacent property, she and her husband are now in the process of trying to find a business idea that they could host from their land and support riders. This is a good indicator that you're not alone in thinking about more development along the trail.

Sorry for being all over the place with this post, a little sleep deprived as I try to hit as many celebration stations early in the morning before work ...

[khutchi]

I went out to an event for the trail and met a retired woman who owns an adjacent property, she and her husband are now in the process of trying to find a business idea that they could host from their land and support riders. This is a good indicator that you're not alone in thinking about more development along the trail. .

Wow that's really inspiring to hear. Would love to meet this person...

Sorry for being all over the place with this post, a little sleep deprived as I try to hit as many celebration stations early in the morning before work ...

I work nights at the casino but i'm going try and come out to the events tomorrow and friday to throw my support behind the riders and encourage the newbies. Maybe i'll see you there!

[youjustcomplain]

Once the rail trail opens, I will likely ride it daily to and from work. Currently I live 5 minutes from the rail trail and my work is another 5 minutes off the trail, but there is a highway between me and work, currently. I'm hoping they do a nice crushes gravel or pavement because, currently, the section I'd ride is very rough with large jagged rocks. Not a nice ride unless maybe you're on one of those fat tire bikes.

To me, the whole "if you build it, they will come" phrase comes to mind. I suspect I'm not alone in saying I'll bike 9 months of the year once the trail is open. Why drive when it'll take upwards of only 10 minutes more (each way) to get some exercise and save on fuel costs.

For me, businesses on the trail would not be of any benefit. I do think a few coffee shops that back onto the trail would be fantastic for some casual trail users, but it would need to be a business without those users as I doubt there would be anywhere close to enough business from the trail, at least not for a few years.

[marooned]

What a great thread - thanks all. I agree with 60-years that new ridership will be the immediate effect of the opening of a bikeable route through town. Folks that wouldn't feel comfortable biking through town now will! It will be awesome!

As for commercial enterprises that will result, my sense is there's not a lot of planning you can do on this front, before you are able to track volumes and behaviours. I look back to my time in Victoria, when I was there for both the Galloping Goose (90's) and Lochside Trail (I think 00's) openings and expansions. Bike shops and cafés did open along the line, but not in places you'd expect, and they were in areas with non-trail traffic to support.

I sense as other posters have that existing businesses will also change to cater to trail users, even though they are a bit off the path.

[60-YEARS-in-Ktown]

If the property has been narrowed it becomes less useful to many businesses, but could be very useful for a bicycle oriented business.

[60-YEARS-in-Ktown]

Keep in mind that the KVR trail has many section wit NO SERVICES fir 30-50km at a time, in several places.. Yet people come, even from Europe to ride that trail.
Having more trails close together, can mean that these riders may decide to spend their whole vacation in Southern BC.

[monroe]

Make sense. But i think for it ever to be worth the millions we spent on it , it should be doing something to encourage NEW ridership, not just cater to those of us that already ride and will willingly go out of there way for the trail. However, this is something to be said that those who want to ride already are and those who want to drive will never convert. But never say never , change is slow...

Build it


And they will come