Kenaston bike path leaves too much to the imagination

I want to take a moment to discuss something that really bothered me this past weekend.

It was a beautiful long weekend, so Jeff and I decided to bike to my parents house and back. Normally, this is a trek that takes over an hour. To shorten our trip, we decided to use the almost-finished bike path that parallels Kenaston Boulevard in the south end of Winnipeg on our way home.

The path consisted of recently-packed gravel, which meant that it was fairly easy for Jeff and I to navigate our bikes down. We were doing well, and enjoying our exercise, until we reached the intersection at Waverly Street and Kenaston (Bishop Grandin Boulevard). If anyone doesn’t know the intersection I’m referring to, it is where the now-defunct Crampton’s Market used to be located.

One would assume that the bike path would extend to the intersection. No such luck. The gravel path suddenly veered off to one side, into a field. We continued along this route – considering that our only other option was to drive on the shoulder of the busy road – and found ourselves in a parking lot. The parking lot turned into a road, and the road led us away from the intersection. We emerged on Waverly Street, and had to bike down the shoulder, race across traffic, pull our bikes onto the centre median, and repeat the process.

To add to our already-mounting frustration, Jeff and I emerged sweating, cursing, and stressed out on the opposite side of the road only to discover the continuation of the bike path. It started just as abruptly as its predecessor had ended, and ran up a hill and out of sight. What I found interesting was the fact that this path was recently and beautifully paved.

The two sides of the bike path aren’t connected, and there is no pedestrian crosswalk or corridor in between. I understand that this part of the construction process might occur at the end of the project, but that just doesn’t work for me. People (like me) will use something like a bike path even if it isn’t nicely paved. There were a lot of tracks in the gravel when we biked down it, and I’m sure there are many people who used it after us. A crosswalk is a very important aspect of the process, and I believe it should have been built before construction on the bike path began.

I’m also interested to find out why the path doesn’t run all the way to the road. I’ll admit that the land around one corner of the road is quite wet and grassy. If it’s going to be finished SOON, I’ll let that point go. If not, I’ll resume my frustration. What’s the point of building a convenient bike path if it isn’t efficient?

Needless to say, I was bothered. I will be watching to see how this bike path is finished, and I hope that I won’t have to write another blog about it. If the path isn’t completed to my satisfaction, however, you can be very sure that you’ll hear about it immediately.