Bowker Creek Greenway arrives … in Saanich

Trail circle at Browning Park
Trail circle at Browning Park

The Bowker Creek Greenway is starting to appear in Browning Park in Saanich. As I mentioned last fall, it is funded by provincial money via LocalMotion and federal stimulus dollars. When I was there yesterday, the asphalt had been poured but the construction fencing was still up. This wasn’t stopping people, as the new, very black asphalt was covered in footprints, of the human and canine variety.

Browning Park with approx. trail location
Browning Park with approx. trail location

Later that evening I spoke with a Saanich Parks rep (at an event on a new 20 year plan for the Cadboro Bay Gyro Park) about the greenway and he stated the last work left to do was some curb cuts and some concrete. He didn’t give me a timeline but the amount of work is pretty minimal so I don’t expect it to be too long now.

One of the sad parts about this project is that the trail likely won’t see a great deal of us because it is isolated in amongst the very car-centric Shelbourne Corridor area (although the whole corridor is being rethought, as I reported a few months back). The next pieces should be easily to get built, because now they are extensions onto an existing trail, not the creation of a new trail whole cloth.