The 34km trail down the true right bank (main highway side) of Lake Roxburgh between Alexandra and the Roxburgh dam, has been granted land use resource consents and received $2 million in funding through the New Zealand Cycle Trail Project.
Tenders were likely to be called soon for the first 10km stretch of the trail, from Alexandra to opposite Doctors Point, but the project depended on several factors, trust chairman Stephen Jeffery said yesterday.
"We haven't made the decision yet to proceed. It will hinge on a number of things, including the tender prices. As well, we're still talking to landowners about some exchange of values and about easements over some of the land involved.""One of the conditions of our resource consent was an archaeological assessment and we've had the first part of that, for the 10km section, carried out.
That report will go to the Historic Places Trust and we don't know know yet what they might ask us to do.
"What we're doing is ticking all the boxes we can, with several projects on the go at once, doing all we can to start the first section of the trail." The trail is estimated to cost $3.3 million and various avenues of funding were being explored for the $1.3 million to be found by the trust, he said.
There are 11 private landowners along the trail route, as well as Department of Conservation, Land Information New Zealand and Contact.
"I remain optimistic it will get off the ground and I'm mindful of the fact that it's a good time to be looking at carrying out the first section of the trail, if we can. It would be a positive thing for our district at the moment. "
The archaeological assessment of part of the proposed route was carried out by Southern Pacific Archaeological Research (Spar).
That section of the trail is all marginal strip or public reserve land.
Spar director Chris Jacomb said 11 sites were recorded during the assessment. Most would not be affected by construction of the cycle trail and were unlikely to be damaged as a result of an increased number of visitors.
