ATV Federation to turn a decommissioned P.E.I. road into a multi-use trail

Those driving ATVs on P.E.I. will soon have a new route to use, as a 1.5-kilometre stretch of Mill Road lets them connect with other trails on the Island.

The province is giving permission for the section of decommissioned road in New Glasgow to be used by all-terrain vehicles, which are not allowed on the Confederation Trail. As a first step, the P.E.I. ATV Federation will be working with its members to restore the clay road.

"One of our clubs, Quad Trax ATV Club, is going to rehabilitate the road and turn it into a shared-use trail," said Peter Mellish, the federation's executive director.

"It's a trail for everyone to enjoy — you know, hikers, bikers, walkers, horses, cyclists, ATVers, side-by-sides, dirt bikes, that kind of thing. It's for everybody to enjoy the great outdoors."

The trail is important for ATV riders because it will be an easy way for them to connect to a greater trail network, Mellish said.

"This is between Warburton Road and Bertram Road and it will be one of the connecting roads for us to be able to connect the east to the west," he said.

The plan is to reroute the trail around sections of Mill Road that are "environmentally sensitive," Mellish said.

"We don't want to keep coming back to maintain it; we want to build a sustainable trail to begin with," he said. "We're basically going to let Mother Nature take back the sections that are environmentally challenging and we're going to build a new trail around that with a new bridge."

He said that will help mitigate erosion on the "fairly steep" road, so that runoff doesn't end up in any water course.

Mellish said a number of environmental assessments and surveys have been done in partnership with local watershed groups, and there will be an assessment every three years once the route is complete.

Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Ernie Hudson said encouraging riders to use this new trail will lessen the chance of ATVs going onto properties where they are not welcome.  

He said the federation and provincial officials and politicians "have developed a great working relationship, the ability to have very candid conversations with each other, to raise these concerns and [say]: 'How we can address this?' 

"Safety certainly has to be paramount. It's one of the things we always have to look at in the development of pilot roads."

Right now ATV riders can use pilot roads amounting to 50 kilometres scattered throughout the province. Hudson said it's all part of a plan to eventually create a tip-to-tip trail network across the Island.