Town staff went back to the drawing board and came back on Monday night hoping to meet in the middle of the sidewalk.
The proposed installation of a new sidewalk on the east side of Hurontario Street between Lockhart Road and Tracey Lane came before council last night, but concerns brought forward last week during committee about uprooting existing trees and costs were echoed again at the council table, despite staff trying to compromise.
The design comes with a price tag of $250,000.
“We’ve come across a very unique challenge in designing the sidewalk in the standard location,” said Director of Public Works and Engineering Brian MacDonald.
The trees along the boulevard were the main concern when the issue came before the committee level on Nov. 18, as well as wanting to incorporate bicycle lanes into the design.
“It will mean the destruction of about 50 trees. We’ve looked at alternatives... but the preferred location (for the sidewalk) is away from the curb where safety is most prominent,” said MacDonald, adding that 10,000 cars travel along that part of Hurontario Street per day.
The challenge of replanting, said MacDonald, is the spacing of the trees that currently exist along the boulevard is too tight to adhere to current guidelines for tree planting, according to the landscape architect. To compensate, he said staff had looked at planting more trees across the street from the sidewalk as well as to the north and south.
“We were able to find locations for 20 more trees. It isn’t exactly one-to-one ratio but it’s much closer than originally proposed,” he said. MacDonald indicated the town would be able to plant about 40 trees in locations to the north and south of the sidewalk and on adjacent residential properties.
While MacDonald said incorporating bike lanes into the road as part of this project isn’t feasible, he said staff have looked into the possibility of widening the sidewalk to make room for younger cyclists to use that route.
“There’s a possibility for us to expand the sidewalk and still accommodate the trees we plant,” he said. “Hopefully we could get a sidewalk between two and three metres in width.”
Coun. Kathy Jeffery put forward a motion for council to approve doubling the number of trees to be planted to replace the ones being removed by the end of planting season in 2020, to 118 trees.
“The extra trees could be offered to private properties that are impacted along this stretch or other municipal properties,” she said.
Coun. Mariane McLeod asked what the additional cost of the extra trees would be. MacDonald said it would add roughly $65,000 to the cost of the project.
Coun. Jeffery's amendment to replace the trees at a two-to-one ratio was passed unanimously.
There is no plan yet on where 118 trees could be planted in the general area of the Hurontario sidewalk.
Coun. Doherty also put forward an amendment requesting the sidewalk construction design will accommodate cyclists in some manner.
“I don’t have an issue with cyclists cycling, but I do have an issue with confusing the children in our community that they can ride their bikes on some sidewalks, but they can’t ride them on others,” said Coun. Bob Madigan. “That is my fear. We have a great trail system. We have a lot of kids in those areas going to St. Mary’s, Cameron Street... I just don’t want to confuse the kids.”
“There are instances of us trying to be everything to everybody and I don’t think in this instance we can be,” he added.
Deputy Mayor Keith Hull asked if adding width to the sidewalk would also add to the cost of the project. MacDonald said he couldn’t give an additional number and would get back to council with costs.
Saunderson asked Doherty to withdraw the motion and bring it back during budget deliberations, to which she agreed.
The main motion to approve the sidewalk design and associated tree removal was approved by council unanimously.
