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No bike trail advocate is willing to commit to the exact time their dream trails will be complete.

But West Kelowna is stepping up its game and as long as the federal government comes through for the Okanagan Indian Band, it could be possible to cycle from Coldstream to Peachland safely next year.

Right now, West Kelowna is building a route through two vineyards (The Hatch and Quails Gate) that will lead down to Green Bay Road.

READ MORE: Construction of cycling trail connection through wineries in West Kelowna set to begin

The city has looked at continuing the pathway along Boucherie Road.

“There has been some preliminary design done for that,” Stacey Harding, the city’s project and operations manager, told iNFOnews.ca. “However, it was a really large price tag to continue down Boucherie all the way and probably would not have happened in the near future. We were very concerned about public safety on the road so we looked for an alternative to get people off the road quicker so that’s why we’ve gone down through the vineyard, for now.”

He hopes to have an alternate route scoped out in time to have it included in the 2024 city budget.

But first, the Boucherie route.

It is being built along farm roads in the orchards lower than the road surface. That work should be done, with some asphalt, by the middle of June. The full project, from Gregory Road, will take a couple more months to complete.

The next phase could connect an existing trail through Frind Winery to Pritchard Drive, which could link back to Boucherie Road.

That would run into Westbank First Nation lands.

Right now the band is building sidewalks and a bike lane along a stretch of Boucherie Road between Sonoma Pines Drive and Ridge Estates Drive, Westbank First Nation told iNFOnews.ca.

But it will take future developments to trigger the building of bike lanes from there through Westbank First Nation land for about two kilometres to connect to West Kelowna trails leading up to Goat Peaks Regional Park.

The Trail of the Okanagans Society is expecting to get funding later this year in order to complete an off-highway switchback trail from there, down Drought Hill to Peachland.

READ MORE: Major expansion of Trail of the Okanagans expected next year

Add to that the fact that it’s expected the federal government will turn over land along Duck Lake to the Okanagan Indian Band in time for the last piece of the Okanagan Rail Trail from Coldstream to Kelowna to finally be completed by the end of this summer.

With that, by the end of next year, there is a good chance the full route, covering more than 80 km, will be mostly off road or in bike lanes.

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