Pan Am Path?

[nfitz]

Cycling is very much a part of transportation and infrastructure, and it should probably be allowed to spread a bit beyond one oddly named thread.

... to another oddly named thread? Seems we should be talking here how to take the PATH to the Pan AM venues!

 

[CDL.TO]

Everyone else seems to have been able to figure it out, nfitz.

 

[nfitz]

Everyone else seems to have been able to figure it out, nfitz.

I'm impressed that everyone else figured out what this thread was about before opening it! Clearly there's been a lot of media coverage of this bicycle path that I've missed for not a single person to have not have been aware of it.

Can someone link to those articles so I can learn more about it? Must have been while I was on vacation ...

 

[smallspy]

The whole Pan Am Path thing is actually pretty hilarious. For the money they spent on spray painting entrances to the trail and on very expensive and hard to find public art along the trail, they could have repaved the heavily used Don trail. The portion just north of the Athlete's Village is in terrible shape and after a rain stays flooded for days.

The City is well aware. A tender was put out to fix it up prior to the Games, but all of the bids came in too high. They are planning on re-tendering it late this year.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[hawc]

I love the big orange pylons in the potholes with orange spray paint all around them. Just fill the pothole already!

 

[Napoleon]

They are planning on re-tendering it late this year.

That's good to know. It's in awfully rough shape. If I were them, I would have been too embarrassed about the state of the trail to advertise it.

 

[marcus_a_j]

In at least two of those cases, the on-road connection between the off-road trails is "temporary" until the City builds a new trail to make that connection. As usual, and much like the reconstruction of the lower Don Trail, funding is the issue here.

I don't recall if they've put signage on the on-street sections denoting the Pan-Am Path - I can't recall of any through the East York section - but they have installed sharrows on the roads to be used.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

I rode the Scarborough section of the Pan-Am Path and there are signs on the on-street sections. That being said, there's definitely room for improvement overall.

Being born and raised in Scarborough, I was rather ashamed that I had never been along the Gatineau Hydro Corridor trail or through Morningside Park (actually, the whole Pan-Am Path portion through Scarborough was virgin territory for me). Yes, it just utilizes existing trails and bike routes, but it's also a means of linking the various trails (and parts of the City) together, which is the whole point. From Victoria Park Ave. to the Rouge River it's just under 25 km. I tried to use only the signage to direct me, and except through Thomson Park, the route is easy to follow. Westbound through Thomson Park there is only one sign, and it's very easy to miss, even if you made the correct three turns at trail intersections preceding it. I did not guess correctly and cycled around the park for 15 min before I gave up and pulled out my Toronto Cycling Map, which was of little help because the Pan-Am Path line is too wide for the scale of the map. I had to zoom in on my Google Maps app to find the trail that leads back out to the Gatineau Hydro Corridor.

Overall the I thought the Pan-Am Path was great, especially the Highland Creek and waterfront sections.