Cycling and hiking trail infrastructure improvement for Spruce Lake, New Brunswick

in progress

The not-for-profit Coastal Link Trail Inc., in partnership with the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission, The City of Saint John and the NB Department of Natural Resource and Energy Development, will be rehabilitating and re-purposing 4.8-km of former NB Railway lands along the shoreline of the City of Saint John’s Spruce Lake, which will then connect to 2.2 kilometers of new unbuffered bike lanes along the Ocean Westway Road in the City’s south end. The 7 kilometer addition of greenway trail and buffered bike lanes in the City of Saint John will create a connection to the existing Nationwide Trans Canada Trail Network, and the City’s existing active transportation (AT) network that currently ends near the City’s center. The addition of the new trail and unbuffered bike lanes being proposed for this project will also will create a contiguous AT network from the south end of the City (Spruce Lake) to the northeast end, ultimately creating a balanced transportation network that meets the needs of all community members with a variety of AT options which include cycling and pedestrian traffic. The not-for-profit Coastal Link Trai Inc. is the Organization responsible for constructing New Brunswick’s provincially recognized Signature Trail, the Coastal Link Trail, across southwest New Brunswick. When complete, the 171 km trail it will connect the East Coast Greenway in Calais, Maine, USA to the rest of the Trans Canada Trail network, that ends in Saint John, NB. When it is done, it will be the longest international trail network in the world, and also a part of Canada’s nationally recognized Trans Canada Trail network. The Spruce Lake to Ocean West Way section of the trail is a critical connection of the regional trail network. The trail will travers the entire region by creating new active transportation routes from the existing trail segment in St. Stephen, NB to the Trans Canada Trail in Saint John.