In the spring it’s frequently muddy and in winter it’s often a dangerous mix of ice and snow.
The dirt path owned by the Municipality of Pictou County that connects sidewalks between Stellarton and New Glasgow is one that is often used by walkers and joggers who do a loop that passes through Stellarton, New Glasgow and the Municipality of Pictou County.
Tony Corbin is one of the “loopers” as they are referred to locally and says he’d love to see a proper sidewalk put in the area.
“It’d be huge,” he said. “Right now it’s mud and puddles. In the winter time, you have to go on the road because it’s not plowed.”
He remembers once there was a group jogging through the area and a woman fell and broke her wrist.
“It’s an issue there for sure,” he said.
It’s a topic that Andy Thompson has been fighting for since becoming a councillor and he believes his predecessors in the role likely fought for it as well.
He’s commonly heard his constituents raise concern about the hazards of passing through the area. One person even sent him a picture of a person in a wheelchair who got stuck in the mud.
In addition to the people who jog through the stretch, he said there are many students at NSCC who take the bus to the Irving in Blue Acres and then need to walk to Stellarton to get to their apartments. But when they reach the mud, they risk travelling on the road.
“You see them walking on the main road with their wheeled suitcase,” Thompson said.
The sidewalk issue isn’t just one of annoyance, but could be costly for the municipality in other ways he believes. Just this past February, the Municipality of Pictou County was listed on a Notice of Action by a man who is taking legal action against the municipality after he was struck by a car in the area.
According to legal documents obtained by The News, the plaintiff, Christopher Wood, was walking through the area, on Feb. 11, 2016, around 8:35 p.m. The Notice of Action states that he was walking on the side of the roadway because the sidewalk “was not available for use due to high snow banks piled on the sidewalk.”
According to the documents, the man suffered soft tissue injuries to his back, a collapsed right lung, lacerations to his liver and adrenal glands, abrasions and bruising from his right ankle up to his right arm and fractures to all the ribs on his right side.
While Thompson doesn’t know Wood personally, he believes a proper sidewalk could help prevent some accidents in the future.
“If we can improve it so that it would be less likely that would happen again, that would be great,” he said.
Evie Fraser lives in Plymouth and enjoys walking from her home and along the trails in New Glasgow.
“Coming back home once you get to Tracey Sharpe’s Service Station, there’s no safe place to walk,” she said.
She believes it probably hinders people from walking that way.
“I just feel like if that sidewalk was approved a lot of people would do the loop around the towns more,” she said.
Thompson acknowledges there are some challenges with putting a sidewalk in the area because of existing infrastructure, but he believes it’d be worth the investment.
“Plymouth is growing and we want to have safe access to our towns that we live beside.”
He believes putting in a sidewalk would also be in line with the Municipalities Active transportation policy.
