LOGISTICAL CONCERNS

I was also concerned that the proposed Millennium Trail extensions past residential backyards would create something very akin to the walkways which, based on past experiences, we have deliberately stopped building. 

The areas between the residential properties and the canal are not very wide to begin with.  The land nearest the canal banks would be fenced off, making the area available for trail uses narrower still. Take away the land needed for a proposed buffer for the neighbours, and the available area begins to become quite narrow.  It begins to resemble the walkways – narrow fenced-in corridors abutting residential properties – which were built around the city several decades ago.

Abutting landowners’ concerns about problems with this type of pathway are not entirely unfounded.  Aside from the photographic evidence of parties and vandalism on the existing Trail (the most alarming of which is holes cut in the fence along the canal bank), and the anecdotal evidence given me in the past by people living across the canal of the noise they hear from late-night parties, there is a host of documentation in City files, stretching over two decades, of the problems fenced-in pathways past residential properties can produce.  

For example:  A builder appeared before Council in November 1981 and described inability to sell houses adjacent to walkways, as well as the problems caused by children using them.  Two years later, a lady who lived adjacent to a walkway in the City’s south end appeared before Council and related the difficulties this had entailed for her family: “damage to property, stolen articles as well as physical dangers.” In the early 1990s, north end walkways off Green Boughs Road and Edenwood Court were closed at the request of neighbours (and, in one case, a 75-signature petition).  Among the problems cited were vandalism, invasion of privacy, littering and safety of the residents and children in the area. 

Neighbors of a walkway between Brian Crescent and Harriman Street fought unsuccessfully, throughout the 1990s, to have it closed.  Their issues?  Again – ongoing problems of garbage, loitering and vandalism.  One neighbour cited approximately $9,000 in damage to cars parked in his driveway, picking up broken beer bottles on a daily basis in summer, having encountered used condoms, and having had to jump in a break up a fight where two older boys were beating a much younger boy.

Walkway problems were so endemic that not only were many closed in the early 1980s and onward, but staff began actively discouraging further walkways from being built.  The pattern was clear.  North end or south, the bad experiences had been the same:  Loitering, vandalism, littering, property damage, and concerns about safety.  This was what fenced walkway areas behind residential properties, unfortunately, meant for the owners of those properties.

A September 10, 1979 staff report summarized the situation:  “A problem of walkways for pedestrian and emergency access is well known and recognized.  Owners of properties adjacent to the walkway continually object to walkways adjacent to their property.”

This problem with emergency access would have been created by building some of the proposed Millennium Trail extensions.  Concerns that the proposed narrow, fenced-in paths past residential backyards would be an invitation to trouble are legitimate.  At night, these would have been long, inaccessible, very dark (as there are no plans to light them) corridors – which the police had no intention of patrolling because, as the police had indicated to some residents: "at night it would be too dark for it to be safe." 

A Waters & Meredith principal once wrote, on company letterhead, about a proposal for an entirely different trail:  “The proposed walkway would basically be in our backyard … As we understand it, the design would not allow for police patrol, which puts the neighbourhood properties at much greater risk of break-ins, in addition to the loitering, potential damage and littering.”

There are other, safer trail options – especially those (such as the north-south “Downtown Trail” route and the former railway corridor along Palmer Avenue) which abut roadways and are thus lit at night and readily accessible by the police.