It will only be until noon, but a pilot project starts Saturday that will shut an area of Lakeshore Drive down to vehicular traffic for the next three weeks.

The reason for doing so is because of the amount of people who use that part of the park for running, walking, cycling or wherever and it can get congested because of the narrow pathways currently in place.

Run Regina Executive Director Shawn Weimer has been looking for something like this for years.

“We’ve been looking at the potential of doing something like this to give more space to runners, walkers, cyclists, basically anyone who is doing something active. “Weimer said.” We want those people to have more space available to them.  We know during the pandemic that space is not only needed, but wanted so they can be done safely.  When there are a lot of people on the pathways, it creates a space issue so this will alleviate that.”

Weimer says with just over a kilometer of road being shut down, it will allow for a lot more people to do what they want and a lot of the park will not be impacted.  He is hoping if the pilot project is successful that this can be expanded to perhaps be something that happens on the weekend all day and all year long.  He is encouraging people to come out to provide feedback to not only Run Regina volunteers that will be out and to the Provincial Capital Commission that had to approve the request.

Weimer says since news first broke of what is going to happen, there have been a lot of positives expressed.