We are relieved to announce that the Nose Hill Trail and Pathway Plan was approved with little modification at the Standing Policy Committee (SPC) on May 4. The plan went to a full sitting of City Council on May 16. Yes, there are still groups lobbying to scrap the plan, ban bikes or exempt themselves from the plan, however in the end we hope reason prevails.

Post SPC update

There are several rants on this website about the plan, so if you are unfamiliar with it, please review these links (Cycling Detractors, Bike Restrictions, Nose Hill archive.) The procedure at an SPC meeting is that each presenter gets 5 minutes to voice their opinion. There were over 100 people in attendance and 35 presentations. All were pretty passionate about the park, leaving the SPC with a tough decision to make as to who's passion is best for the hill.

Of the 15 points in the plan, almost every presenter voiced an opinion over two issues: (i) pavement and (ii) trail restrictions:

Pavement - the plan proposed to pave the infamous trail named 5.8 in the plan (450m of new pavement on top of an existing, eroded dirt trail) and also proposed to pave a trail from the Edgemont parking lot to the new Brisebois overpass. It also proposed to repair the decrepit Porcupine Valley (Berkley Gate) pathway and to rebuild all pathways to a narrow tread width with an aggregate inlay to make it look like gravel (no yellow line.)

Many Owls Valley erosion

Dozens of presenters described this as and "end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it" scenario. And to counter, dozens more suggested it was desirable. We feel the argument against pavement was a bit exaggerated - member after member of the Friends of Nose Hill stood up and portrayed a bulldozer hacking through the virgin stands of aspen in Many Owls Valley, where in fact it is already a road and pretty eroded.

Fortunately, in the end the Aldermen agreed that while it held great symbolic significance to some, it was a limited amount of pavement and was appropriate.

Trail Restrictions - one of CMBA's greatest fears with this plan was that, like past plans (1994, 2000), it would require only cyclists to stay on designated trails (60 km) while walkers and dog walkers sought an exemption that would allow them to go anywhere on the hillside (~300 km.)

Other than being blatantly unfair, this exemption would kill any attempt to stop informal trail proliferation. If close to 90% of the users continue to use the informal trail system it will continue to degrade. Some speakers thought there was no problem at all, so there should be no bans, others felt they had a right to ignore trail closures and vowed to keep using the closed trails. CMBA felt strongly that all users should be subject to fair restrictions as everyone had a part in causing the erosion, so everyone should share in reducing it.

Again the committee decided not to amend the plan, which would have exempted walkers from staying on route. Once you are on the escarpment (steep slopes) all users are required to follow the same restrictions. Stay on the designated trails.

Altogether it was an extremely long nine hours of argument and counter argument. There was some bike bashing, relatively few dog-bike issues, and in general most presenters passionately wanted to preserve the park, it was just they disagreed on pavement or whether restrictions would apply to themselves or not.

Of note, we were very impressed that the Aldermen from the three wards around the park (Druh Farrell, Bob Hawkesworth and Gord Lowe) all had intimate knowledge of the park. Each had visited it, understood the problems and seemed genuinely concerned with preserving it for future generations. We hope cyclists in the wards around the park remember this when the next election comes up.

The plan still has to go to a full council meeting on May 16, and they could still amend it, however the public cannot participate beyond the SPC meeting. If it does pass, we should start seeing trail improvements in about a year and closures of degraded informal trails in about two years.