$500K of funding in place to open first half of Shuswap North Okanagan Rail Trail

A $500,000 grant means that enough work can now be done on an almost 20 kilometre stretch of the Shuswap North Okanagan Rail Trail to open it the public, hopefully in 2022.

Combined with a four km section to be built near Enderby, that means almost 24 km of the 50 km route from Sicamous to Armstrong can be opened once the work is done.

“We’re thrilled,” Alex de Chantal, the fundraising strategy coordinator for the trail, told iNFOnews.ca “This will help us get more people familiar with the project and eventually, when this section is complete, we’ll be able to get out there and feel it and walk it and see the trail first hand, which is really exciting.”

The B.C. Active Transportation grant was announced today, Sept. 29, and is to be used for things like rock scaling, road crossings, bridge decking, safety signage, preliminary grading and erosion mitigation.

The funding is for a 19.8 km section of the trail that runs on a former rail line from Sicamous to near the Mara Lake Community Hall. That work does not include upgrading the road surface so, while it can be opened for walking and mountain biking, it probably won’t be suitable for road bikes, de Chantal said.

The section near Enderby will include the full rail bed treatment and will serve as a test section to show the public what the finished product will look like.

READ MORE: Work on first stage of Sicamous to Armstrong rail trail to start this year

“We’ll be able to start taking some video and photos and sharing those of people actually using the trail, which goes a long way with people,” de Chantal said.

That should help with community and corporate fundraising.

A $459,000 federal government grant earlier this summer, along with corporate and community donations, means $1.2 million of the $8 million fundraising goal has been reached in less than one year.

The $8 million is the estimated cost of upgrading the rail bed for public use. The full cost of the project is more than $17 million and includes things like erosion control and road crossings, including an overpass over Highway 97A.

Now that the federal election is over, de Chantal is waiting for the promised federal active transportation funding program to be launched.

It had been hoped that the Enderby section of the trial would have been built this year but approvals from the province took longer than expected then the wildfire season diverted staff from regional districts to other tasks.

de Chantal is expecting both projects to go to tender this winter or next spring. While he hopes the work will be finished next year, he can’t say for sure that’s going to happen.

The rail line is jointly owned by the Splatsin First Nation along with the North Okanagan and Columbia Shuswap regional districts.

It’s expected to eventually join with the 50 km long Okanagan Rail Trail from Coldstream to Kelowna then on through other mostly rail trials all the way to Osoyoos.

For more information or to donate go here.

READ MORE: Rail Trail along Vaseux Lake a distinct possibility

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submitphotos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.