Abstract Manager

Often, when people think about ideal walking or cycling environments, they think of large, dense cities. But smaller, rural municipalities are increasingly realizing the benefits that enhancing their active transportation and trail networks can offer -  fostering tourism and economic development, helping revitalize small town centres, offering recreational and everyday mobility options, ensuring vulnerable seniors and children can get around safely, and enhancing the healthy, sustainability, and social cohesiveness of a community. This is in part in response to significant growth that is underway or anticipated in many small, rural communities, that is creating many challenges along with opportunities to balance land use, infrastructure, and servicing into the future. In many ways, small towns - due to their size - are great places for people to walk or bike, as all services are within a small area, and there is often a considerable appetite for trails to connect residents and visitors to surrounding natural areas.

This presentation will use three Active Transportation Master Plans from across Ontario that I coordinated and were all completed in 2024 as case studies, from the Municipality of Trent Hills, Town of Cochrane, and City of Kawartha Lakes. The first two of these - Cochrane and Trent Hills - are both small municipalities, but quite distinct in their context, climate, landscape, and community needs. The third, Kawartha Lakes, is a larger municipality, but is made up of considerable rural lands, many smaller towns and hamlets, and also has a considerable seasonal population and tourism industry.  These plans will provide a window into the unique considerations in developing AT plans for small, rural communities, including the intersection between active transportation and trails, various types of active transportation trips and users, managing conflicts between active and motorized recreational trail users, and plan implementation considerations - including prioritization, partnerships, and resourcing.