Trails
Around 400 kilometres of multi-use trail run through the Greater Toronto Area — paved, separated from traffic, and open to anyone on foot or on wheels. Most of them sit in ravines and hydro corridors: the land nobody could build on. Here is what there is, and where it stops.
Railpaths
Beltline Trail
A mixed-use trail following the path of the former Toronto Belt Line Railway, which operated for about seventy years. The Spadina Expressway carved through the area in the late 1960s and the trail still carries the scar: it is cut in two at Allan Rd, fifty years on. The eastern half, through Mt. Pleasant Cemetery and down Mud Creek to the Brickworks, is the best of it.
The Railpath
A rail corridor turned into a trail, running southeast beside the tracks from the Junction towards downtown. The extension south is the most watched piece of trail in the city.
Ravine trails
West Don
The west branch of the Don, from the top of the city down to the forks. Quieter than the east branch and, in places, greener.
Yellow Creek
A short ravine trail running north from the Brickworks under the Rosedale bridges. Small, steep-sided and almost entirely hidden from the streets above it.
Culham Trail
The Credit River through Mississauga, west of everything else on this map. It is here because the network does not stop at the city line.
Lower Don Trail
From the forks down to the harbour — the busiest valley route in the city, and the one with the most unfinished edges.
Humber Valley Trail
Its western counterpart, following the Humber from the lake north through the valley.
Etobicoke Creek Trail
A creek-side route from Marie Curtis Park at the lake north through Etobicoke, mostly in the valley and mostly away from traffic.
West Humber Trail
The Humber's western branch, running out to the north-west through a long chain of parkland to Claireville.
Upper Don Trail
The top of the East Don, from Steeles down through German Mills to where the valley trail proper begins — the quietest kilometres on the whole Don.
Highland Creek Trail
Steep and wooded, dropping from Morningside down to the lake at Port Union — more climbing than anything else on the map.
E-Don Trail
The spine of the eastern network: the Don from the top of the city down the valley to the forks, with almost every other trail in the east joining it somewhere along the way.
Upper Don Connection
The way west out of the Don without using a road — Wilket Creek up through Sunnybrook to the top of the Beltline. A connection rather than a destination, and the network leans on it.
Taylor Creek Trail
East out of the Don along Taylor-Massey Creek, through a ravine most of the city has never heard of, to Warden Woods and Dentonia Park.
Waterfront
Leslie Spit
A headland built out of the city's own rubble, now a wild park on the lake. Open at weekends, flat the whole way, and unlike anywhere else in Toronto.
Martin Goodman Trail
The lakeshore route across the whole width of the city, and the one that has seen the most recent investment.
Hydro corridor trails
Finch Hydro Corridor Trail
A long straight run under the transmission lines across the top of the city — unglamorous, and one of the most useful links in the network.
The Meadoway
A hydro corridor being rehabilitated into meadow and trail across Scarborough, one of the largest projects of its kind underway.
Wishful thinking
W Don Extension
The west branch of the Don stops short of the top of the city. This is what carrying it the rest of the way would take.
Don Conn. Extension
The Don Connection runs west across the ravines and stops. Joining it properly to the valley would close one of the most useful gaps on the map.
Trails that do not exist. Each one is a route the city could have, drawn as if it did — which is the point: a gap is easier to argue about once you can see what would fill it. There are more of them than have pages: switch the Wishful thinking layer on from the main map to see every one.
Finch Extension
The Finch corridor carrying on east under the same transmission lines, past the 404 and out to the Rouge — the longest easy win on the map, and almost all of it public land already.
Mimico Creek
A creek that runs the whole way from the airport lands to the lake with no continuous trail beside it. This is what one would look like.
Etobicoke Creek South
The southern half of Etobicoke Creek, from the QEW down to Marie Curtis Park — the piece that would finish the creek route.