Safer Streets for Everyone-CATTL

Last week, CATTL attended the Cycling Summit: Safe Streets for Everyone It was an invigorating conference with attendees from all sectors of transportation, focusing on design. The main take-away was to look at who is using the route and design for those users (instead of always defaulting to design for the cars). CATTL has embraced the concepts presented at the conference and is looking at routes in Trent Lakes where other user groups can benefit from the design principles so that there are safe “streets” for everyone in Trent Lakes. What about you? What ideas do you have for design of routes in our community? Let us know!

1-less WEDNESDAYS-CATTL

Earth Day is Monday April 22. This is a day of action to protect the planet. Since CATTL focuses on transportation, we challenge everyone to drive 1 less km every Wednesday…we call it “1-less Wednesdays”.Happy Earth Day Everyone!

VOTE FOR ME!-Lakehurst Road County Road 37 Trent Lakes-CATTL

The crosswalk between The Buckhorn Community Centre and the Buckhorn Public School should be a high-use crosswalk, but it isn’t. Many people park at The BCC and walk to and from the school every weekday, often with their children, so it makes sense that there should be a pedestrian crosswalk between the two places. However, a site visit by CATTL revealed that NO ONE uses this crosswalk. The tipped over pylon in the photo is telling of why that is; the pylon alerts would-be users of the crosswalk to the safety issue that the crosswalk ends at a ditch without any connection to the school. CATTL has nominated this crosswalk in CAA’s Worst Roads in Ontario campaign, as an “unsafe crosswalk”. The CAA Worst Roads in Ontario vote draws attention to road safety issues for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Please go to the CAA website and cast your manual vote for the Lakehurst Road county road 37 Trent Lakes unsafe crosswalk as the worst in Ontario. In future posts, we will share the story of CATTL’s plan to make this crosswalk convenient and increase the safety of citizens crossing county road 37 in Trent Lakes.

Happy Easter!-CATTL

2024 “Worst Roads” March 27-April 19, 2024-CATTL

CAA vote for worst road in Ontario. Most folks think of this as a complaint about pot holes, however as Jamie Stuckless points out in this CAA video, this is actually an advocacy campaign to improve the safety on Ontario roads for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. We don’t like to be negative, and we hope that our promotion of voting for the worst roads in Trent Lakes helps to improve safety.

CATTL has entered 2 nominations:

1. County road 37 Lakehurst Road-Buckhorn Public School crosswalk (that leads to the ditch)-voted due to “unsafe crosswalk/walking infrastructure”

2. County road 23 Buckhorn Road-the Buckhorn bridge-voted because of “unsafe cycling infrastructure“

You can vote for these roads by clicking here, or any other roads you feel are unsafe. Our nominations are not in the dropdown, so choose “manual vote” at the top of the voting page to enter the information.

You can also share your Worst Road and Road Photos at #ONWorstRoads. Please share our post and get out the vote!

The 2-year Anniversary of CATTL

March 23 marks the 2-year anniversary of Citizens for Alternative Transportation in Trent Lakes (CATTL).

Reflecting on CATTL’s accomplishments so far, we have partnered with the Buckhorn District Tourist Association to complete and implement a tourism grant resulting in:
bike parking racks at Chase Park, Sandy Beach, Trent Lakes Library in Buckhorn and the Cavendish Community Centre, The BCC, and Galway Community Centre,
Bike repair stations at The BCC and Cavendish CC, and an EV charger at The BCC.

CATTL partnered with Kawartha Highlands Park and Peterborough County to install a bike parking rack at the KHSS on county road 36.

CATTL partnered with Peterborough GreenUP, Buckhorn Public School, The BCC, B!ke, and InVizzen to bring “Let’s Bike” bicycle skills to all students at our school.

CATTL partnered with Trent Lakes, Peterborough County, and The BCC to complete a grant that would see phase 1 of a Mobility Hub at The BCC.

We have explored opportunities for The Link extension to Trent Lakes, electric vehicles for Community Care, greenway active transportation connections in the Open Spaces plan and to Curve Lake, electrification of our school buses, crosswalk improvements at the school…and many more.

Folks reach out to us with their hopes and dreams for better transportation solutions for our community on a regular basis, and we hope that we can continue to make inroads toward these improvements.

If you have ideas to share with CATTL, or would like to join the herd, drop us an email at CATTLpath.

Safety-check for e-batteries: UL stickers-CATTL

A recent e-bike battery fire on the Toronto Transit Commission subway caused pause for safety with respect to taking e-bikes into the subway. One thing to check for when purchasing any electric micro-mobility machine (e-bike, e-scooter etc.) is to look for a UL sticker. The TTC is looking for these stickers and so should you. They are one way to reduce the risk of fires with lithium batteries that are used in the machines. Advocates are recommending that folks look for the UL sticker (versus merely tested to UL standards) as a safety measure if you are purchasing e-bikes and the like. Additional measures advised by the Canadian e-bike association include proper battery storage and charging. So remember, stay safe, and #LetGoOfTheGas.

B!ke is looking for…bikes!

Safe Cycling in Trent Lakes-Sign us up!

If you have ridden your bike across the Buckhorn bridge at “rush hour”, or tried to cross the road to Sandy Beach in the summertime, you know that cycling in Trent Lakes is not for the faint of heart. What options are there? Well, let’s find out! The Peterborough Bicycle Advisory Committee is presents “Safe Streets for Everyone”, a cycling summit for Peterborough and the Kawarthas. Registration information is coming soon, but in the meantime, you can save the dates-April 24-25 in Peterborough. This event is sponsored by Wildrock Peterborough Cycling Club Big Sky Design, and Peterborough County. You will find CATTL there, learning the ropes of safe street talk. How about you? Do you have places you would like to be safer to cycle? Post a comment here!

Happy Leap Day! from CATTL

It only happens every 4 years, so we will take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy leap day! This week our municipality of Trent Lakes took a big leap into the future by completing an application to the Rural Transit Solutions Fund to create an intermodal Mobility Hub with our partners at The Buckhorn Community Centre. You can read more about this venture here If this model helps transportation in our community, it could be expanded to Phase 2, and additional hubs could be added to Catchacoma and Kinmount So today, in honour of Leap Day, let us know what leaps you have taken to #LetGoOfTheGas!