K&P Trail completion date slips past Canada 150

Jeff Green | Jan 11, 2017

It was a goal that fit nicely into a narrative. The K&P trail linking the Trans Canada Trail segments between Sharbot Lake and the Cataraqui Trail to ensure Frontenac County is part of the national trail network was to be complete by Canada Day 2017. A photo-op at the Trail head located at the exact location where the funeral car carrying Canada’s first prime minister switched onto the K&P line, for its trip to his adopted home town of Kingston as thousands looked on, would be the centre-piece of Canada Day celebrations in Frontenac County.

It’s not going to happen. The complicated final 12 kilometres of trail, which are located on lands that were sold off to the owners of abutting lands before the rest of the trail was sold to Frontenac County, have proven to be slow to acquire, as agreements need to be reached with each landowner. Only then can a contract for building the trail even be negotiated.

At their final meeting of 2016 in late December, Frontenac County Council accepted the bid by Crains’ Construction to build “approximately 4 km of the 12km remaining to be completed by the end of 2017” in the words of a staff report to Council. The bid price was $137,593 plus hst and Crains’ also agreed to honour the same unit pricing for one year should more trail be freed up for development as agreement with landowners are reached.  Their bid was the lowest of 7 that came in, the second lowest was $195,200 from the Cruikshank Group.

At this time, 42 kilometres of trail, between Orser Road and the rail crossing in Tichborne have been completed. Work has begun in the City of Kingston to complete the Kingston portion of trail so it will run all the way to Lake Ontario.
Funding for the final section of the trail is coming from a Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program and the Investing Ontario Fund, which has made just under $500,000 available for the project.

Frontenac County Council members from Frontenac Islands and North Frontenac were able to secure special funding from the county for recreational infrastructure within their borders when the K&P Trail was first being developed. The trail is only located in South and Central Frontenac and county gas tax rebates were being used for its construction.

That money is all gone, as those rebates are going directly to the local townships, and funding the K&P Trail has come mostly from grants.

At the December meeting, Councilor John Inglis made a request to county staff for an accounting of all the money spent on the trail since the proposal to purchase and construct it was approved in 2009.

There is no set completion date for the trail.