Ontario opens its largest publicly funded bike park in Oshawa

Oshawa just wrapped construction on what appears to be Ontario’s largest publicly funded bike park. A sprawling new facility inside Rose Valley Community Park stacks three asphalt pump tracks beside a rebuilt dirt-jump zone and a dedicated mountain bike flow and skills area. The city’s grand opening is set for Oct. 4, but the place is already buzzing with kids, parents and everyone in between on bikes, boards and scooters.

“It’s honestly got to be Ontario’s largest bike park. I’m quite sure,” says Chris Dewar, owner of Transitions Bike Parks, who helped design the riding features and oversaw key construction milestones for the city. “The city of Oshawa really went all in and implemented this massive facility.”

What’s there

Dewar shared the area breakdown:
MTB flow line and skills area: 0.91 hectares (2.249 acres)
Asphalt pump tracks: 0.48 hectares (1.186 acres)
Dirt jump park: 0.35 hectares (0.865 acres)

That’s 4.300 acres of purpose-built riding space within a larger community park that also adds sports fields, trails, a playground, parking and a high-tech washroom facility. The full park project carries an estimated $9-million price tag.

Three pump tracks, one accessible

Oshawa’s pump track offering covers the full spectrum.

“You have a wheelchair-accessible strider track, then you’ve got a separate intermediate pump track and then you’ve got a separate intermediate slash advanced pump track,” says Dewar. “So there’s three asphalt tracks there now.”

For riders who prefer dirt, the jump park spans beginner, intermediate and advanced lines.

“We brought it back to life,” says Dewar, describing Transition’s late-July push to uncover, reshape, compact and re-water the lines after two years of site construction elsewhere in the park. The crew used SoilTac, re-established drainage and taught city staff basic upkeep. “We provided training to the city staff to show them how to keep everything groomed.”

Flow laps and skills to spare

Beyond jumps and pumping, there’s a mellow flow circuit with corners, rollers and two options that keep laps moving. A separate skills park adds skinnies, armour-stone rock rides, small drops and bermed corners. Dewar calls it a “warm-up zone,” but for newer riders it’s a low-stress place to build confidence.

From rogue jumps to a model project

This story started the way a lot of good bike parks do:…