K&P Trail To Be Substantially Completed By The End of 2026

It has taken over 17 years and millions of dollars, but Frontenac County will have completed the K&P Trail, almost, by the end of this year.

Richard Allen, Manager for Economic Development for Frontenac County, appeared before North Frontenac Council last week to outline plans to build out most of the final section of the K&P Trail in the township. A Request for Proposal has been put out, with a September 5th deadline, to rehabilitate a 7.8 kilometre stretch between Snow Road and Wilbur Road, near the border with Lanark County.

The project has received a $164,000 Rural Ontario Development (ROD) grant which will cover about 1/3 of the cost. The remainder of the cost for what is expected to be a $450,000+ project is coming from the remainder of the federal gas tax fund that Frontenac County used to receive, until those funds were diverted for local township use.

As part of the ROD grant application, North Frontenac committed to paying $10,000 towards the project. That is the entire local contribution that will be required, Richard Allen said in response to a question from Councillor Vernon Hermer.

The project is slated to commence in early October. As part of it, there will be some construction within the more built-up area in Snow Road, and Richard Allen said that he expects that part of the project will be completed within a 5-day window, to minimise disruption to the daily lives of residents in that area.

The trail will run along Road 509 north and west of Snow Road before turning to the northeast to follow the old rail line towards the Lanark County border. Before this project was designed, an arrangement was made with the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority to transfer a section of the trail that they previously owned to Frontenac County Frontenac County owns the trail in its entirety from the border with the City of Kingston, at Orser Road, all the way through Frontenac County. However, there remains a dispute over the ownership of a section between Wilbur Road and the border with Lanark County that is the subject of court proceedings.

Allen said that Frontenac County will not do any construction on that section until the court matter is resolved and they are able to assume ownership. There is also a section of the trail within Snow Road that is not part of this project. When questioned about that section by Mayor Lichty, Allen said that the section will cost more per kilometre than other sections, and it was targeted by a separate grant application to a federal funding program. That program was paused during last year’s federal election, and has not been activated. For now, the trail runs across a short section of Hwy 509.

“There is some significant investment that is required there, it is much more costly on a per metre basis than what we are currently doing to build that. We think it is necessary and we will be of benefit to the community and to the trail. We may have to find other funding partners for that project to be completed, going forward,” he said.

Once this latest project is complete later this fall, the build out of the K&P Trail from the shores of Lake Ontario to Lanark County will be substantially completed. It took 17 years from the start of the project in 2009, and Allen said the approximate cost comes to about $4 million. The project was funded through grants that were obtained along the way from a variety of provincial and federal programs, and federal infrastructure money that flowed to Frontenac County from the Federal government. Funding for the project was not taken directly from Frontenac County ratepayers, with the exception of some seed money, like the $10,000 from North Frontenac, that was necessary to support grant applications.

In anticipation of the completion of the K&P and other trails, a meeting is set, appropriately enough, at the Kick and Push Brewery in Sharbot Lake on September 15, for businesses to talk about the opportunities now being pursued for a 320 kilometre Eastern Ontario Cycle Trail loop that uses the entire length of the K&P Trail in Frontenac County, as well as the Cataraqui Trail, among others, and runs through Snow Road, Sharbot Lake, Verona, Harrowsmith, and Sydenham in Frontenac County, as well as through Chaffey’s Locks, Portland, Smiths Falls, Carleton Place, Almonte, Packenham, Arnprior, and Calabogie.