Okanagan Rail Trail missing link could be closed by end of summer

The City of Kelowna has issued a request for proposal to complete the missing link in the Okanagan Rail Trail by the end of August.

The proposal call is posted on the city’s bidding opportunities webpage and calls for submissions to be made no later than 2 p.m. on April 5.

“Substantial performance for all work is to be achieved no later than Aug. 31, 2023,” the proposal call says.

It calls for 6.4 kilometres of trail to be built from Old Vernon Road to 500 metres north of Beaver Lake Road.

The Rail Trail is a former CN rail line that was bought by local governments in 2015 and the first completed section, from Lake Country to Coldstream, opened in 2018.

The one incomplete piece is from Old Vernon Road just north of Kelowna Airport and along the east side of Duck Lake to Lake Country.

The Okanagan Indian Band applied to the federal government years ago for title of the land along Duck (Ellison) Lake but that has yet to be announced and has prevented the work from being completed.

The red line shows the incomplete section of the Okanagan Rail Trail. | Credit: Submitted/Friends of Okanagan Rail Trail

“The works include clearing and grubbing, trail construction, gravel placement, fence removal and installation, pedestrian overhead flashers, timber bridge pedestrian improvements, miscellaneous signs and posts and related works,” the call for proposal says.

Part of the incomplete trail runs through the privately-owned Eldorado Ranch. An agreement was reached in 2019 to install a six-foot-high chain link fence through the ranch along with two gates since there are two roads crossing the rail line.

The call for proposals says the project has an estimated budget of $1.3 million and includes 5,900 linear metres of clearing and grubbing, 6,600 linear metres of trail construction, 26,500 square metres of gravel placement and 4,500 linear metres of fence removal and installation.

In February 2022, an agreement was reached between the City of Kelowna, the District of Lake Country and the Okanagan Indian Band to develop road, water and sewer connections in the Beaver Lake Road area.

Part of that agreement included a guarantee by Okanagan Indian Band that the trail will be open to the public through their lands, once it gets title.

Once complete, the trail will be 52 km in length and connect Coldstream with Okanagan Lake in downtown Kelowna.

No one from the band or local government officials overseeing the rail trail responded by publication time to requests from iNFOnews.ca to determine if title to the land has now actually been granted to the band.

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