Rail trail section nearly done

The Sicamous-Mara section of the Shuswap North Okanagan Rail Trail is set to be completed by the end of the month, but public access will be limited until temporary parking can be set up at an interim trailhead.

At the Nov. 13 District of Sicamous committee of the whole meeting, Fiona Barton, CSRD community services manager, joined Phil McIntyre-Paul, project consultant, to give a presentation about the status of the Shuswap North Okanagan Rail Trail project.

McIntyre-Paul told council the Sicamous-Mara section of the 50 kilometre, non-motorized greenway trail is on track to be completed by the end of November.

“The surfacing is in place, signage is in place and notice the gate,” he said. “It's still closed because of the unresolved access at this point.”

The 500-metre section from kilometre 0 to kilometre 0.5 is located adjacent to ongoing construction related to the R.W. Bruhn Bridge replacement project. It is likely to be inaccessible until the bridge project is completed in 2027.

“The rail trail partners, along with District of Sicamous staff, are meeting and have been working on trying to figure out what the interim access is,” McIntyre-Paul said. “That is a critical piece to getting people on that section travelling.”

Fiona Barton, CSRD community services manager, said the trail will remain closed until safe access can be found.

“More specifically, safe access for people arriving by vehicles,” she added. “So if you are adjacent to the trail, and you're accessing it on foot and not by vehicle, by all means, you can access it when the trail is deemed open.”

She said rail trail owners do not want residents travelling to the trail by car until temporary parking is available to avoid creating a nuisance for nearby residents.

“We're in that planning process at the CSRD of where that temporary trailhead could go, and the logical area at this point is potentially the Folland Road intersection with the trail,” she said.

“There's a number of ways that that could be provided. There's potential to partner with private landowners, but also looking at partnership with our provincial colleagues over at the ministry for use of the road reserve to do that temporary parking.”

Mayor Colleen Anderson asked if the trail would be able to open in the spring of 2025 if the district was able to provide a “built for Sicamous solution." Barton confirmed it would be able to open.

The Sicamous council has previously explored whether a ferry service from downtown Sicamous to the rail trail would be viable, as well as the possibility of installing a pedestrian bridge over the channel.

The Sicamous-Mara trail project had a budget of $753,000, provided through grant funding. McIntyre-Paul said the section has remained on budget throughout construction.

The final accounting of the budget is still pending, and will be completed by Urban Systems as contracted by the CSRD at a later date. McIntyre-Paul said extensive rock scaling and flood mitigation work made up large parts of the budget.