KITCHENER — A busy stretch of the Iron Horse Trail will be closed until June.

Starting Monday (April 30), construction begins for improvements that will close the trail from Glasgow Street to Victoria Street South.

The closure will last about five weeks.

[ Iron Horse trail to get $1.7M upgrade this spring ]

Improvements are to include wider, repaved surfaces, larger roadway crossing, way-finding and identification signage and new lighting along the trail.

The southbound detour will be Glasgow Street to Park Street to Strange Street to West Avenue. The northbound detour will be Henry Sturm Greenway Trail to Belmont to Glasgow.

The Iron Horse Trail was created in 1998 and runs for 5.5 kilometres — four of them in Kitchener — along the railbed of the old Preston and Berlin Street Electric Railway, from Ottawa Street in Kitchener to Erb Street West in Waterloo.

It's the busiest, most popular off-road trail in the region, with as many as 37,000 cyclists and walkers a month, according to a 2015 study.

More information is available on the city's website at kitchener.ca.

- Iron Horse trail to get $1.7M upgrade this spring