Draft Management Plan Pegs K&P Trail Maintenance costs at $115,000 Per Year

Jeff Green | Jul 21, 2021

At their July meeting, which is traditionally the only meeting they hold in the summer, Frontenac County Council will be considering a draft management plan for the K&P trail. The Frontenac County portion of the trail is about 75kms, from the county border with Kingston at Orser Road, to Clarendon in Central Frontenac. The planned expansion of the trail through North Frontenac to Lanark County, where it runs all the way to Renfrew, is a project that has already had funding allocated, and it is included in the report.

Frontenac County is at a deficit when dealing with trail maintenance issues because it does not have an in-house roads department, and relies on the expertise of the township roads departments for advice. Steve Kelley, a retired public works manager who worked in a number of communities including the town of Perth, and lives in Sunbury, provided technical expertise in the development of the management plan.

The estimated cost per year to keep the trail in its current condition is $1,500 per kilometre, $115,000 overall for the current 76 kilometre trail. The county is working on a plan to build out an additional 20km of trail in North Frontenac which will add $30,000 in annual maintenance costs, bringing the total cost close to $150,000 per year. Mississippi Valley Conservation owns the final 7km of trail linking North Frontenac to Lanark. They have approached Frontenac County about the county taking over that portion as well, which would result in a further increase to maintenance costs to be borne by the County,

K&P Trail construction has been an ongoing project of the Frontenac County Economic Development Department for 15 years. The cost of construction, and land purchases in locations where the former K&P rail line was sold over the years, have run into the millions, but most of the cost has been covered through specific grants and allocations of more general federal “gas tax” grants.

“The question for the county this week is do they want to keep the trail up to the standard it was built to, and how do they want to finance the cost,” said Joe Gallivan, Director of Planning and Economic Development of Frontenac County.

The draft plan dovetails with a related issue for Gallivan, that of oversight. Trail construction and maintenance is a function of the Economic Development Department of Frontenac County.

Richard Allen, the Manager for Economic Development (who is on parental leave this month), has spent much of his time dealing with trail related issues, as did his predecessor Anne Marie Young. A consultant report in 2020, which looked at the two-member Economic Development departments, recommended that all trail matters should be handled by some other department in order to allow the department to focus on its core function.

“I came to the county in 2009, and at my second meeting Anne Marie Young was presenting a report on trail construction, and that did not make sense to me any more than it does for Richard to be dealing with trail maintenance now,” said Gallivan, in a phone interview this week. “It did not make sense then and it does not make sense now, and the only reason is that we do not have a county public works department.”

At the end of his report to Council, introducing the draft management plan, Gallivan writes, “To date, responsibility and institutional knowledge regarding the development and management of the Frontenac K&P Trail has primarily rested on the desk of the Manager of Economic Development. With the adoption of the K&P Trail Management plan and the policies therein, it can be expected that other individuals (third party or within the County) will be able to also participate in the development and management of the K&P.”

The draft report describes the K&P Trail as a “spine” in the Active Transportation Plan that acts as the main connector for a network of regional rail-trails and the villages and the people therein.

Use of the sections of trail that are already complete has increased considerably over the 16 months of the COVID pandemic, with use by cyclists and walkers seeing the greatest increases.

In June of 2021, 36% of the use was by cyclists, 47% by pedestrians and 17% by ATV's (editor's note: the K&P is a non-motorised trail south of Bellrock Road in Verona.)