The push to expand bicycling infrastructure in Greater Sudbury received a boost this week, with news the city is receiving $1,122,543 in provincial funding.
The money is part of a $93 million fund the province announced Monday for 120 communities in Ontario, increasing the size of the Ontario Municipal Commuter Cycling Program, which had been set at $42.5 million.
Marisa Talarico, the city's active transportation coordinator, said Greater Sudbury is receiving the most money of any community in the North. The funding is based on population and the per cent of people who bike to commute.
"That is pretty great, because it will allow us to keep up the momentum and continue to build on the successes we had this year," Talarico said. "It's a great opportunity for our community."
The money will be used for a few projects, she said. This year, work began on creating a bikeway along Paris Street and Notre Dame Avenue. Work was done between York Street and Walford Road – a little more than eight kilometres – and Talarico said a detailed design will be done to complete the work, from Lasalle Boulevard to Regent Street.
"We also asked for money for some construction, as well," she said.
They will also use some of the funds to create more bicycle parking in the city, an issue that emerged during public consultations earlier this year.
"We did a survey (and) we had about 1,500 people respond to it and bike parking was consistently identified as one of the biggest barriers to cycling in our community," she said.
"People didn't feel we had enough safe places for them to store their bikes. That will be something we'll definitely be focusing on improving with this money."
The priority will be improving bike parking at city owned properties, such as citizen service centres, Tom Davies Square, libraries, community centres and the downtown transit terminal.
"And we have some ideas we're working on about how we can work with the private sector throughout the community to provide bike parking, as well, at local businesses," Talarico said.
Also planned are about 20 kilometres of "lines and signs" in different parts of the city.
"This would be bike lanes and edge line type facilities, where it's mostly a matter of going out to roads where we already enough existing width and looking at how we can improve those for cyclists," she said. "We're looking more at, for example, what's on Southview Drive or Lansing, those are edge lines. Not so much the sharrows."
The provincial funding is a four-year funding program, with the stipulation being that the money has to be spent by the end of 2020.
"So we can apply for funding four times in total," she said. "As long as it's spent by the end of 2020, we have some flexibility on how we apply it to the projects, as well as when.
"That's really great for municipalities. It allows us to be more flexible in how we do our capital planning, for example. It gives us time to be ready to spend the money."
She praised city council for dedicated money every year to improve cycling infrastructure. Under the program guidelines, the city and province share the costs, with the province paying 80 per cent.
"So without the money city council has allocated to cycling infrastructure every year -- $800,000 -- we wouldn't have had our 20 per cent," Talarico said.
