KITCHENER - The popular Iron Horse Trail will undergo a major facelift this spring.

The $1.7 million in improvements, expected to be completed by July, will add lighting, widen the trail and improve key road crossings and signage.

Kitchener council approved a tender Monday night for the work on the busiest section of the popular trail, a stretch of more than two kilometres from just north of Gage Street to Queen Street South. The other Kitchener sections of the trail will get similar upgrades in 2019.

"It's really encouraging that the entire Iron Horse Trail will be brought up to standards by the end of 2019," said Mark Parris, a landscape architect with the city.

One improvement trail users have been asking for is better ways to cross major roads. The work this spring will widen a pedestrian island on Queen Street North, and improve the crossing at Victoria Street and West Avenue. The trail's original design required users to cross at the traffic lights at West Avenue, but most users took the more direct route, crossing midblock on West and again on Victoria. The new design will put in pedestrian islands to make those crossings safer.

The project also includes:

• Lighting the trail between Queen Street and Victoria Street, courtesy of a $600,000 grant from the Region of Waterloo and the federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, as part of efforts to encourage "active transportation" such as cycling and walking;

• Widening the trail to 3.6 metres. Some sections of the trail are 2.5 metres to 2.8 metres wide;

• Providing better access to the trail at Victoria Park, with a new parking lot near the trail and the city works shop in the park, and a second rail crossing and trail access point at the west end of Victoria Park, near the forebay of Victoria Park Lake;

• Improved signage. "When you get on the trail, you'll know where you're going, and how far it's going to be until you get there," Parris said.

The work was originally slated for last fall, but the city's original call for tenders yielded no bidders. When the call was re-ireissuede city got five bids.

Plans to replace a pedestrian trestle bridge over Henry Sturm Creek had to be put on hold because there wasn't enough money in the budget to cover that. The bridge is inspected every two years and is structurally sound, so will be replaced with a wider bridge at a later date as money becomes available, Parris said.

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, where updates will be posted as work progresses.

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