CREDIT: JERROLD RUNDLE
London is adding over 21 km of bike paths throughout streets and green spaces.

With the beginning of summer just around the corner the City of London is getting ready to ensure Londoners feel safe and welcome when they get on their bikes.

With over 91 km of bike paths already spread throughout the city across green spaces and streets alike, the city's Cycling Advisory Committee is installing an additional 22-plus kilometres of path this summer.

Joining that is the plethora of cycling related projects on the Civic Works Committee roster this summer, including the installation of more Bike Fit-It stands, a pilot program for a fitness rewards app last summer that recorded over 28,000 km cycled, as well as having information booths at a number of this summer upcoming festivals like Grickle Grass, Old East Block Party and Dundas Street Festival — it's beginning to look like London's bureaucrats are taking cycling seriously.

Not convinced yet? The City teamed has teamed up with Ontario By Bikes, a provincially recognized website promoting cycling culture, to help promote this year's London Bicycle Festival, being held June 27 in Springbank Gardens.

The push is all part of what London's Division Manager of Transportation Planning and Design Doug Macrae says is a multidimensional, infrastructure promoting plan called London ON Bikes.

It's a master plan the city has been using for the past year to design and shape the next four years growth and transit of citizens around the city, and website londonbikes.ca is the latest way the city is trying to connect its increasingly digital based population.

City paths are an amazing and fun way to view several of the city's natural and manmade features like the London Archaeology Museum and the Westminster Ponds, but if you're looking for something a bit out of the way and worth the effort of lugging your lunch with you the Fanshawe Conservation Area boasts an intricate latticework of off-road trails and stunning viewings of both the Fanshawe Dam — a 30-metre tall hydroelectric generator — and the waterways on either side of it.

The Fanshawe Lake is used to seeing boaters every weekend throughout the summer and the Thames River which dropping 12 metres and host of fishers and their children lounging on the fossil filled rocks along the shore in the dams shadows, waiting for the next perch or walleye to bite.

While biking through all parts of the city, Londoners must continue to realize one thing. We share these streets with others who use them for their home and grocery store.

In a phone interview with James McKay, an ecologist for the planning offices of London, he says Londoners should be aware of other living creatures.

“People need to be aware that there's the chance that you could come across wildlife while going on one of our trails,” he said. “I don't think there's been an increase in number occurrences, but it's always been a potential issue.”

McKay also says there's the potential for concern, considering the green space we have.

“In urban areas, especially London, we have quite a bit of green space within the city … but that's always the potential concern,” he said. “There's always going to be a potential incident.”

It's mostly been people with small dogs who have been attacked in recent coyote incidents, McKay says, and that despite the case of a teenage girl being jumped on by an unknown canine on May 8 that most animals try to avoid humans as much as possible.

In the end, people need to be aware about a few things: the city of London is beginning to wake up to its citizens' demands for a more comprehensive plan for cycling in the city; there are dozens of interesting and unique places that can be visited by using London's current bike paths; and our streets are animals' homes.

Remember these before heading out, and enjoy the summer cycling.