Quesnel City Council has approved a grant application for 580 thousand dollars for a Sugarloaf Multi-Use Pathway.
The full cost of the project is actually 754 thousand dollars.
The City’s portion of the bill, 174 thousand, would come out of Federal Gas Tax reserves.
As for why it costs so much, City Manager Byron Johnson, says there are a couple of reasons…
“What we’re attempting to do with this rebuild is to actually widen it to make it machine accessible which of course allows for much better snow clearing. In addition it allows us to work with some of the accessibility issues, it’s a pretty steep pathway and the report talks about it a lot, so one of the solutions in here is to create some flatter spots.”
Right now, it doesn’t always get the snow cleared as it is very time consuming.
Tanya Turner, the Director of Development Services, noted that it would bring the trail up to the same standards as the rest of the trail system.
Mayor Bob Simpson said the current trail is failing…
“If we end up having this portion of the trail lost then the West side trail network is effectively cut off right, you don’t have a circle route anymore, so taking advantage of the grant, if we are able to do this, then there’s no local tax dollars involved in this project, the province and the federal government are paying for this project.”
The grant application is to the BC Active Transportation Infrastructure program.