Ontario Trail News - Ontario Trail Counts and Hamilton Trail Survey

Learn more about your trails - Trail Counts

Trail Counts

Ever wondered who is using your trail and when? Looking for more than just a static count of trail activity? Tell others about what type of person is using your trail, what makes your trail a popular destination...and more!

We have your answer.

Utilizing smartphone technology trail users can now complete a short survey that:

Logs in the trip

Single counts individual users

Consolidates results for centralized reporting

Consultation on survey content.

We ask your questions - the facility manager asks what they want to know!

Allows for separate trail counting

Multi-season operation

24/7collection

Identifies quality of trail experiences

Provides you feedback loop

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Year-long trail survey tracks walks in the park

TRAILS

John Rennison,The Hamilton Spectator

Sign posts marking the Hendrie Valley Trails. Hamilton Burlington Trails Council and McMaster University are conducting a survey regarding area trails use.

Hamilton Spectator

By Jeremiah Rodriguez

Joggers, bikers and even parents pushing baby strollers shouldn't be surprised if someone with a clipboard asks them why they're using Hamilton nature trails.

Throughout the next year, impromptu questionnaires are one of the ways the Hamilton Burlington Trails Council (HBTC) and McMaster University are completing one of the most extensive trail surveys ever conducted in Ontario.

The joint initiative launched on Thursday will use online surveys and up to 36 volunteers to survey trail users on the flyto find out who's walking the trails, how they get around and where and why they're choosing the paths they are on.

The goal is to find out if certain paths could be linked, what trails are most popular and which need attention. In Hamilton, there are more than 130 kilometres of nature trails.

"The City of Hamilton has a lot of trail head counts, but we don't know who they are. Are they on bikes? Are they walking with dogs? Do they live nearby? Do they come here often?" said Wayne Terryberry, HBTC chair and McMaster University Outdoor Recreation co-ordinator.

"What can we use to make the trail experience better? We want to get definite data in different seasons — an annual time table."

The data along with information from community partners like Hamilton Conservation Authority and the Royal Botanical Gardens will go toward building a comprehensive trail map.

"We have 13 survey locations through Hamilton and Burlington and they are going to be surveyed by volunteers, and at each survey there will be a manual head count of people passing by," survey co-ordinator Alex Farquharson said.

Matthew Brodka of McMaster University Outdoor Recreation said one of the challenges facing the study is weather.

"Especially if it's a year-long thing, but we have a passionate group of volunteers who are passionate about the trail system."

Ward 1 Coun. Aidan Johnson said the survey data can have a broader impact on people.

"The more people who use and see nature, the more people who'll want more effective environmental policies and more biodiversity protection," he said.

People interested in helping as volunteers for the project throughout the year are encouraged to visit the Hamilton Burlington Trail website, http://hamiltonburlingtontrails.ca/.

jrodriguez@thespec.com

905-526-3434

Ontario Trails News - all about Pan AM and cycling

Find your favorite

More on Story here

More to Story here

More to Story Here

Ontario Trails News - a plea to cycling advocates to change course and get off the roads.

Link to Ontario Cycling Trails

Students of Ontario cyclist killed during hit-and-run offer support through GoFundMe campaign

After yet another cyclist was killed in Southern Ontario on July 3, following a fatal hit-and-run in Milton, an online campaign has been spearheaded to help the fallen rider’s family.

As the CBC reported, Chris Harper, a 50-year-old father of five from Oakville, Ont., was killed that night after being struck by a car. He was a victim, authorities say, of impaired driving — and after the collision, the 33-year-old driver who hit him fled the scene.

The woman responsible was charged with dangerous driving causing death, impaired driving causing death, and failure to remain.

In the GoFundMe campaign to ease the burden on his surviving family, Harper’s students — he was a teacher at Meadowvale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ont. — appear to be significant contributors. It’s not just a matter of relieving a burden, though. To hear the accounts of those close to the tragedy, it’s the alleviating of a nightmare, a word that has been used literally and explicitly to describe the situation.

“Its a nightmare,” said Heidi Cyfko, a friend of Harper’s family, in conversation with the CBC. “The family is coping as best they can and preparing for the funeral of this tragedy caused by drinking and driving.” As such, it’s a situation that his family doesn’t deserve, students say, and they want to do something about it. “[Harper was] taken from the thousands of past, current and future Meadowvale SS students whom he taught and would have taught,” wrote former pupil Mike Fugler, who initiated the fundraiser, “and positively impacted through his dedication and passion to the classroom.”

“Most importantly, he was taken from his wife Melissa and their five children, Luke, Nicole, Leah, Alison and Joseph. It is for them we give to this fund. They have lost the most important teacher in their lives, so lets help them out with their future education.”

As of this morning — only two days since the GoFundMe campaign was initiated — the fundraising drive had already exceeded its $25,000 target.

Ontario Trails News - Orillia looks at cycling tourism and find your favorite Ontario Trail!

Find your favorite trail - use the Ontario Trails Map

Mar 15, 2015 | Vote0   0

Orillia eyes cycling tourism

Orillia eyes cycling tourism

File photo

“Orillia has amazing trails,” but needs to develop cycling tourism, Brendan Matheson, of Cycle Simcoe, told Orillia council this week.

Orillia Today

By Frank Matys 

Orillia holds untapped potential as a destination for cyclists and a share of the substantial dollars they bring to communities, council heard this week.

“Orillia has amazing trails,” said Brendan Matheson, of Cycle Simcoe. “They have an amazing network, but they have a great opportunity to develop the tourism aspect, for sure.”

Cycle Simcoe is a tourism initiative that aims to steer two-wheeled enthusiasts onto area trails and into local communities.

It is a countywide strategy involving the Barrie/Simcoe Cycling Club, Tourism Simcoe County and Oro-Medonte Township, where the project was initially tested.

“The goal is to make cycling more safe, more memorable and more fun, county-wide,” Matheson told Orillia council during a presentation.

The cycle-centric group recently produced a map identifying safe cycling routes in the Lake Country region, which includes Orillia.

“Then we sign those routes to make sure everybody knows where they are going,” Matheson said. “The next part is to develop a safety and education campaign to make sure that everybody is riding safe out there.”

Cycling tourism is a lucrative enterprise that brings in more than $390 million annually in Ontario, Matheson added.

More........http://www.simcoe.com/news-story/5476298-orillia-eyes-cycling-tourism/

Ontario Trails News - meet us at Trailhead North, and gaps in riding in Toronto

Northern trail fan? Meet us at Trailhead North!

CITYSCAPE

Mapping the City’s Bike Network Gaps

Toronto is slowly making progress on its bike network, but there's lots of room to grow.

BY SEAN MARSHALL

Toronto’s bikeway network is often a source of frustration for the city’s cyclists, and with the map above, it’s easy to see why. It illustrates the extent of Toronto’s bike infrastructure―or in some parts of the city the lack thereof―as of January 2015, and how there’s plenty of room for improvement to fill in the gaps. Toronto’s bikeway network includes off-road multi-use trails, separated cycle tracks like those on Sherbourne Street, bike lanes and contraflow lanes (like those on Shaw), and signed bicycle routes that otherwise have no facilities for cyclists (“sharrows” notwithstanding). With the recent addition of the Adelaide and Richmond bike lanepilot project west of University Avenue, and the new contraflow lane on Simcoe Street, the downtown network of bicycle routes is slowly improving; though cyclists await the completion of the oft-delayed Queen’s Quay project.

Ontario Trails News - Trailhead Ontario, join us in Hamilton for a complete discussion about trails in Ontario.

Join Us for Trailhead Ontario - Ontario's Trail Conference June 7-10, 2015

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Ontario Trails News - find your favorite mountain bike trail, and Greenbelt Tour in NIagara

Find your favorite Fatbike Trail

The wheels continue to turn

The wheels continue to turn

CARLA CARLSON PHOTO

Janet Neimer and Albino Di Santo from Beamsville, Venture Niagara’s Susan Morin and Becky Glenny, manager of the Grand Oak Culinary Market, chat about how they can help each other through the Niagara Cycling Tourism venture.  Neimer and Di Santo, members of the Niagara Freewheelers Bicycle Touring Club were, among others, filmed in different locations in Niagara and can be seen throughout the new Niagara Cycling Tourism video, showcasing Niagara.

Grimsby Lincoln News

By Carla Carlson 

More than 100 cycling enthusiasts came together at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Centre in St. Catharines on Jan. 22, to hear details about Venture Niagara’s recently completed Niagara Cycling Tourism project. 

Niagara’s Olympic medallist Steve Bauer welcomed everyone by relating his personal cycling experiences to the evolution of cycling in Niagara. Bauer put some perspective on the many years of ongoing work by volunteers, local municipalities and regional staff that has brought the cycling infrastructure to where it is today.

Susan Morin, community economic development manager for Venture Niagara, was the presenter for the information session following Bauer’s greetings. She notes, “Venture Niagara received funding from the Ministry of Training, College and Universities to help hire a cycling tourism coordinator and provide resources for the project.” Key activities of the project included a cycling related environmental scan of the 12 Niagara municipalities, a survey of visiting cyclists, research on cycling friendly destinations through out the world, and attendance at several cycling related events. These events included participation in a Greenbelt workshop, the Ontario Bike Summit and staffing an information centre at this past summer’s Vélo Québec tour through Niagara.

The highlight of the morning meeting was the public launch of niagaracyclingtourism.com, a bilingual, cycling focused website with a video showcasing Niagara as a premier cycling tourism destination. To see the website information and video, visit www.niagaracyclingtourism.com. Businesses and organizations interested in benefitting from the growing popularity of cycling are invited to advertise on the site as it is relatively inexpensive to do so. In fact, several business owners in attendance at the information session took the opportunity to become among the first to purchase advertising on the site.

Numerous individuals, groups, organizations and municipalities across the region have worked towards establishing Niagara as a popular cycling destination for tourists, recreationists and locals. A variety of programs have been implemented in recent years to cater to this market. Two examples of such programs including Cycle and Stay Niagara and Share the Road- Bicycle Friendly Communities.  Cycle and Stay Niagara is a network of bicycle friendly B&Bs along major cycling routes that are willing to transfer cyclists’ luggage and purchases between accommodations while they are in Niagara. The Share the Road Bicycle Friendly Communities program is a cycling friendly designation program for municipalities. Out of 444 municipalities in Ontario, 26 are designated bicycle friendly. The Niagara region has five municipalities holding this designation. The Town of Pelham has a Silver designation and Grimsby, Thorold, Welland and St. Catharines have Bronze designations.

Much has been accomplished to develop Niagara into a popular cycling destination in recent years. However, there is still much more to be done by cycling supporters, municipalities and others to make this area the premier destination for cyclists from across the province and around the world. One of the most important partners in the future growth of this emerging market is small business in urban and rural Niagara. There are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to get on board by building cycling friendly and cycling related businesses. It’s a community project that embraces the whole Niagara Peninsula. For more information contact: Susan Morin, community economic development manager at Venture Niagara 905-680-8085 or visit the Niagara Cycling Tourism website,www.niagaracyclingtourism.com

Ontario Trails News - where Torontonians Bike and Run, find your favorite Toronto Trail!

Find your favorite Toronto Trail!

CITYSCAPE

Where Torontonians Bike and Run

Developers map out the world's most popular spots for walking, jogging, and cycling—and reveal where in this city Torontonians like, and don't like, to get outside and get active.

BY DAVID HAINS

Explore where people walk and run in Toronto with the pink routes, and where they cycle with the orange routes. Data is from RunKeeper. Map by Mapbox’s Garrett Miller and Eric Fischer.

If you made a New Year’s resolution to get outside and be active, you might wonder which are the most popular spots in Toronto for running or biking.

Mapbox’s Garrett Miller and Eric Fischer have your answer. The developers collaborated on a snazzy-looking map that shows where the world’s cyclists and runners—including those in Toronto—like to go.

Using data from RunKeeper, an app that allows runners and cyclists to track their trips and upload results, Miller and Fischer mapped more than 1.5 million trips from around the world. They cut off the first and last 200 metres of each one to anonymize individual routes, and the result is a resource featuring trails marked by various intensities of pink and orange. The pink routes are more likely to be walks or runs, while the orange routes are longer trips, more likely to have been taken by cyclists.

As CityLab points out, the maps highlight commonalities among cities. For instance, people love to run by water—whether along Lake Shore and Queen’s Quay in Toronto, or along the borders of Manhattan.

Toronto’s map reveals that, in addition to being drawn to water, people—no surprise here—love to be active in green spaces. The data shows that the city’s extensive ravine system and its trails are very popular: Don Valley and Humber routes are coloured brightly on the map, showing they’re well travelled. Large downtown parks such as High Park, Queen’s Park, and Trinity-Bellwoods are also well used.

The map also shows a correlation between an area’s built form and the likelihood that people will walk, run, or cycle. East York, North York east of the Allen, and the old city of Toronto are fairly well represented—the walkable downtown core is coloured bright pink. But Scarborough, York, and, to a lesser extent, Etobicoke show a relative lack of use. This could be because of RunKeeper’s data set, which might be produced largely by self-selected users from a younger demographic—but these areas of the city are certainly also more car-dependent and have lower Walk Scores.

These kinds of data don’t just make for shiny maps—they can also support very real policy discussions about how to plan for and encourage more active transportation.

A growing body of research suggests a link between walkability and positive health outcomes. City staff discussed how to build a healthier city by promoting walking and biking [PDF] in a series of 2012 reports [PDF].

In fact, areas highlighted on Miller and Fischer’s walking, running, and cycling map of Toronto appear to be inversely correlated with those known to feature higher rates of diabetes.

Taken from the 2012 City report Towards Healthier Neighbourhoods, this map shows the prevalence of diabetes across the city, with higher-intensity areas highlighted in red.

The data are also suggestive in light of the conclusions of a 2012 University of Toronto study, which found that some neighbourhoods—including south and central Scarborough, North York west of Allen Road, north Etobicoke, and York—had up to five times more cardiac arrests than others. In a 2012 interview with the Globe and Mail, the lead author of the study noted that the rate of cardiac arrests increases as soon as you go east of Victoria Park Avenue: on Miller and Fischer’s map, we see a big drop-off in walking, running, and cycling east of Victoria Park.

Map of cardiac arrest incidents across the city from a 2012 study by the University of Toronto’s Katherine Allan.

Of course, there are many factors—income levels and the availability of transit, for example—that influence an area’s walkability and the health of its residents. Studies such as the 2011 Vertical Poverty Report by the United Way [PDF] and David Hulchanski’s famous Three Cities [PDF] examine data to produce a more nuanced look at the complex underlying issues.

Miller and Fischer’s maps show pieces of a larger story. The most popular trails might seem simply like fun places for a run or merely the result of individual choices, but they’re part of a larger context that governs how the city works—how the built and natural environment, a community’s land-use mix, housing affordability, community health options, and other factors affect the way we relate to and use different parts of the city.

Ontario Trails News - Ontario becoming Best Trails Destination Worldwide - trailsnet.com

Ontario Becoming Best Trail Destination Worldwide

La Cloche Silhouette Trail

If you are planning your summer hiking excursion, you may want to add Ontario to your short list. Over the past couple years,  Ontario has become one of the leading trail destinations worldwide. If you search trail information on Twitter, chances are, you’ll run across a number of trail-related Twitterites in Ontario. In general, Ontario provides a robust outdoor recreation scene with trails as one of their main focuses. Although hiking and backpacking trails make up the lion’s share of their trail system, bike trails are also beginning to pop up throughout the province. Whereas certain cities such as Amsterdam, Portland, Denver and Minneapolis are well known for biking and other areas such as Colorado, California and British Columbia are noted for hiking, Ontario is quickly and quietly becoming Trail Central by providing great trail opportunities including biking trails,hiking trails and backpacking trails. What sets Ontario apart among the various worldwide trail opportunities is their trail infrastructure and trail support system such as that provided by organizations such as Ontario Trails Council.

Ontario Trails News - take a trails course on-line, cycling and trails communities find collaboration works to improve conditions

Lot's of great trail courses - on-line through Algonquin College check our availability today!

Community groups finding collaboration a great way to strengthen neighbourhoods

Toronto neighbourhood associations are finding rewards in reaching across borders with the common purpose of solving urban issues.

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TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR Order this photo

Gathering on the West Toronto Rail Path, from left, Bruce Gavin Ward, Liz Sutherland, Donna Cowan and Suhail Barot got together to develop a road safety program.

By: Laura Armstrong Staff Reporter, Published on Wed Jan 21 2015

Donna Cowan was appalled at the anger in the streets she witnessed when she started commuting on her electric bicycle a couple of summers ago.

“It wasn’t car against bike only, it was car against car, bike against bike, walker against bike, everywhere,” she said.

So Cowan did what she’s grown accustomed to doing since the neighbourhood association she leads, DIGIN, launched a little more than a decade ago: she reached out to other local groups.

More and more neighbourhood associations like DIGIN — which is committed to the cultural, social, environmental and economic vitalization of the Bloor Street West neighbourhood around Bloordale — are breaking down boundaries and working together to strengthen their areas, Cowan said. She believes collaboration is a must if neighbourhood associations want to get anything done.

“Your community doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Just because you have a border to your group doesn’t mean you cross the street and nothing’s happening,” she said.

On Sunday, Cowan, representing DIGIN, met Liz Sutherland of Ward 15 Cycle Toronto; her Ward 18 counterpart, Suhail Barot; and Bruce Gavin Ward, from Friends of West Toronto Rail Path, to work on a street safety initiative aimed at boosting civility and respect among all people who use the road.

People need to come together to improve an area, she said.

DIGIN has had its successes. It was the group’s idea to launch the BIG on Bloor Festival, a bi-annual street festival aimed at getting people in the neighbourhood talking about how to develop their stretch of Bloor.

“It brought together not only community residents’ associations but also social service agencies, the Bloordale Village BIA (Business Improvement Area), the Bloorcourt BIA, councillors, provincial and federal elected officials. From it, people are still talking; other collaborations are still going on. It was quite fruitful,” she said.

Many community groups that neighbour DIGIN subscribe to her group’s email list to keep up to date, Cowan said.