They are trying to make it easy to walk around Humboldt. Trevor Tumach, a consultant working on the Community Trails project for the City of Humboldt, unveiled the potential trails plan for Humboldt during an open house on March 19. "We've looked at doing a series of circuits within the City of Humboldt," explained Tumach. The plan has a series of different routes throughout the city, one running around the perimeter and others branching off to private reserves like Burton Lake and Kloppenberg Trail. "These are both existing rail beds that allow you to do very minimal construction to bring them up to a walking and riding type of pathway," said Tumach. The external trail is about 11 kilometres long, to mostly be used by more serious runners."Basically what you see on the plan right now is the exterior circuit running not necessarily around the City but to provide a running, walking and biking pathway around the City," said Tumach. In addition to the external 11-kilometre trail, there are a number of different circuits within the city planned as well. "They are broken into internal routes and almost a secondary internal route," said Tumach. "What that does is some of those internal routes are major roadways and access points to facilities like the hospital, schools and to some of your green spaces." The plan will connect commercial areas, the Centennial Park area, hospital, Water Ridge Park and many other important community facilities. "Ultimately we would love to be able to focus a path on every street but obviously the funding budget-wise isn't realistic," said Tumach. Since Humboldt's road infrastructure is mostly on a grid system, he explained it is not necessary to create a trail system on all of the roadways. "It is to move people throughout the city," said Tumach. "What it is, is trying to prioritize the movement of people in these areas and allow for not only focusing and localizing traffic in these areas but also allowing the City to be able to provide operating and maintaining budgeting in their plans." He explained having a plan will help the City budget for not only creating the trail system, but for operating and maintenance cost in the future. "It really does give the City some focus on how they can work towards the future," said Tumach. They are looking at three-metre pathways for new trails, but will use existing infrastructure, which are sidewalks between 1.2 and 1.5 metres, for many internal trails. A three-metre-wide trail would allow for a combined walking/running and biking path. Since existing sidewalks are too narrow, they are looking at other options for bikers. "It may not be combined walkway and bicycle path but it may be a walkway with an adjacent area for biking along some of these streets," said Tumach. "One option that could be used to deal with that, which has to be explored and discussed with the City, in some of these areas where there is little to no street parking, there may be the option to have a bike lane on the street. It may be an option but we haven't taken it any further." He said if the plans receive good feedback, they will start providing more detailed planning for sections of what the trails could look like. "We will take it to the next step where we provide more detailed sections of what the roadways and pathways can look like and then more hardlined cost breakdown of certain sections to help allow for budget, donations and sponsorship," said Tumach. Some of the trails were chosen because the space cannot be used for anything else including an area over a SaskEnergy line that is north of the city. "If you can't build on it, why not put a pathway on it where it is going to have little to no disturbance on it and it can benefit the community?" asked Tumach. Although the initial plan has been created, there is no price tag on the project yet, since it all depends on what trails the City decides to build at what time and what type of materials they will use. "It will be more defined in upcoming plans," said Tumach. "I think we need to stay away from the cost of the overall project. You are a community of 6,000 people - whether it be granular or asphalt, you would be hard pressed to do a project of this size all at once." One important issue when creating a trail plan for the City was safety when crossing busy roadways. "There are a number of things that can happen on some of those," said Tumach. The outer trail will cross both Hwys. 5 and 20 in two places. They hope to create some good safety features for pedestrians. He hopes with these spots there can be an overhead structure put in place. In addition, many internal trails also have to cross the highways. Although some of them are in good shape, like the corner of Hwys. 5 and 20, others, like the corner of Hwy. 5 and 17th Street are difficult for pedestrians to cross. "The extension of 17th Street and Hwy. 5 there are no traffic lights or pedestrian lights... There might be opportunities to put pedestrian lights there," said Tumach. In addition to the option of pedestrian lights, the City could also opt for traffic bulbing, which is extending the pathway into the street and narrowing the driving surface at corners. "We have to look at some of those now in respect to whether they are feasible in cases in regards to truck traffic and things like that," Tumach explained. "They not only decrease the amount of walking surface where pedestrians have to go on the street, they also force traffic into a narrower driving location, forcing them to slow down. It is dual purpose." He said one of the major issues people in the city have is with the post office corner. "I think there might be opportunities there for either rerouting or realignment of the street or there could be some bulbing that might help that issue right now," said Tumach. "I know that one is a particular bone of contention that has been brought up a couple of times."
