THE MOUNTAIN BIKE PUSH FOR ACCESS TO L.A. CITY PARK
TRAILS
This was a David and Goliath battle, as the BAC/IMBA bike people were heavily
funded, and experts at political and public manipulations. Equestrians
and hikers tend to be independent, solitary people who resist banding together
as a group. This characteristic has weakened our advocacy efforts.
No one person could have done this alone. For other
trail advocates who many be facing a similar trail problem with mountain bikes,
it is critical to reach out and form coalitions with non-equestrian
groups. I have spent years sitting on Boards and Committees as the only
equestrian. The time, effort and tedium of sitting through meetings, when I
could have been doing other things, paid very large dividends when push came to
shove.
Since it was urban parks at issue, there was a wide panoply of park stakeholders, far beyond the usual
conflict between equestrians, hikers and mountain bikers. A
significant number of people have had the experience of being run off the trail
by speeding downhill bikes.
In order not to be written off as a NIMBY, it is
important for the credibility of your position that
one is not locked into a negative stance. Here in L.A., we
supported strongly the road bicycle’s Transportation element of their Master
Plan. It is a legitimately appropriate use of the streets. However, not
every bike use belongs on every trail. We opposed the inappropriate and
unsafe usage of our Park dirt trails mixing fast moving mountain bikes with
other users.
Over time, attending meetings on other issues, I’ve
made bonds and friendships with homeowners associations, neighborhood councils,
chairs of park groups and organizations not
usually friendly to horse people such as the Sierra Club, running clubs, dog
walkers, conservationists, baby stroller pushers and the Audubon Society, all
who have showed up in solidarity because they shared a common bond to preserve
historical hiking and equestrian trails. These are new allies from unexpected
places and with team work, everybody brought something
to the table.
Several years ago, the arrival of widespread internet
and email access has allowed trail users to communicate quickly and easily with
like minded individuals both Statewide and Nationally.
No longer does one have to write a letter, address an envelope, put a stamp on
it and then wait for a reply. It has aided our efforts immensely to be
able to send documents and communications to multiple folks
simultaneously. It has brought us together in ways that were unthinkable
even 5 years ago.
The success of this Los Angeles trails process was
achieved through a huge and committed group effort. Bound by the commitment to
trail preservation and trail safety, many people contributed personal time,
culled information from many sources, wrote letters and worked behind the
political scenes to provide valuable information and brainstorm courses of
action.
Get involved in your local Community issues. Help
other groups with their non-equestrian issues. Rubbing shoulders with
others in meetings provided credibility to me that couldn’t have been achieved
by picking up the phone and cold calling groups, and asking for help.
THE HISTORY OF THIS CONFLICT
In
1996, Los Angeles City Council adopted a Bicycle Master Plan that included the
consideration of a pilot program for mountain biking. (Beware the concept of
the “Pilot Program” . It is a Trojan Horse in that no pilot program, once in place, to my
knowledge is ever rescinded.)
In 1999, in response to the pressure to allow bikes in
Elysian Park, L.A. Rec. and Parks formed a Mountain Bike Working Group made up
of various Park stakeholders, including mountain bikers, to discuss this
proposal. CORBA (Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Assoc.), assisted by the
International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), charged that the 1996
plan was being ignored and requested access to Elysian Park for a pilot
mountain biking program. This required suspension of
Municipal Code sec 63.44 B 16., the Park Ordinance that forbids
mountain biking on City Park dirt trails. This appropriately affords the
broadest protections for uses in urban parklands.
The discussions were contentious, and at one point,
seeing that they were unable to achieve their agenda, the mountain bikers
boycotted the meetings altogether.
The Working Group continued to meet, and ultimately
turned out an important document titled The Majority Report. This report
is probably the most extensive documentation of mountain bike conflicts
throughout the United States. The report
presented overwhelming public support on safety concerns and
resulted in a unanimous City Council vote that the Ordinance be maintained
without change.
In 2000, with $5
Million of park funds, the City of Los Angeles purchased Mandeville Canyon to
be used for a “pilot program” mountain bike park. The pilot required the completion of environmental studies to evaluate
the use within a year. CORBA promised to conduct an
“Adventure Trails Program,” to introduce youth to mountain biking. They
promised to bring 1,000 inner city kids to the Park. In reality, they
brought one group of kids, and never tried again to bring youth to the Park,
nor was there any review of the pilot program.
Today, nine years later,
the environmental files on Mandeville Canyon are empty. There is no
“Youth Adventure Trails Program.” One would think that the issue,
now stained by non-performance and still-open “pilot program,” would be dead.
In 2008, the City’s Department
of Recreation and Parks (DRP) hired local bi-lingual consultant Mia Lerher & Associates for their Park
Needs Assessment. It was an extensive and expensive survey of Park users,
in which requests for mountain biking didn’t even appear on the list.
Results: Hiking and Bicycle trails
placed Number 1 in the survey (63%) followed by Nature trails (43%) and
Equestrian Trails (17%). An administrative DRP representative
affirmed, “Biking trails” meant paved paths like the LA River bike-path, not
mountain biking. In The American Sports Data, Inc.’s (ASD) 2008 Superstudy of Sports Participation, Mountain biking was
noted in the “Outdoor Extreme Sports” section. ASD trend change for
mountain biking noted a 34% decline since 1998.
The Los Angeles Bike Advisory Committee (BAC), under
the umbrella of the L.A. Department of Transportation, decided to update their
Bike Master Plan. They brought in a consulting group named “ALTA”, based in
Portland, at the cost of $450,000, to revise the Plan. The Bike Master
Plan was to have addressed itself to the legitimate issues of
commuters/street/road biking i.e. striping bike lanes, providing safety
measures, bike racks, street lighting etc.
The mountain bikers attached themselves to this plan,
initially claiming they were “commuters” too. The only difference was
that they wanted to commute on dirt trails. Later on, BAC classified the
mountain bikers under “recreational” biking, as the L.A. paved Bike-Paths along
the river were classified as recreational.
ALTA hired Osprey Group, consultants from Boulder,
Colorado, who have limited experience with the needs of urban park uses, but
extensive experience promoting mountain biking. Osprey had twice before
collaborated with Jim Hasenauer on creating the “Park
City Agreement” and the “Wilderness Society Agreement”, both of which allowed
mountain bikes onto trails where they had been forbidden.
Osprey was paid to conduct
2 meetings (mediations) in which the public was not permitted to participate.
(Mediation is not one of the work items in the signed contract with ALTA). We
found out later that one of the two ALTA consultants had actually been a member
of IMBA for the two years prior to working with ALTA.
A letter written by one of the BAC/ALTA people and
placed on City Planning letterhead was sent out to invite equestrian and hiking
clubs to send a representative to these private meetings. The catch was that
all members of this panel had to be L.A. residents, cutting out many park users
from other areas such as Glendale, Burbank and other parts of the Valley.
Three equestrians, three Sierra Club hikers, and three members of IMBA and CORBA were to represent
their user groups in a discussion on trails. The equestrians were represented
by Lynn Brown, National Trail Coordinator for Equestrian Trails Inc
(ETI) one of the largest equestrian organizations in the State; Mary Benson
representing the L.A. Horse Council, and Dale Gibson of Gibson Ranch,
representing for George Chatigny of the Los
Angeles Equestrian Center. The hikers were ultimately only two, Joe
Young, Chair of the Griffith Park Sierra Club, and Executive Committee
member of the Angeles Sierra Club and Bill Crane, Sierra Club member and
hike leader from the Sylmar area. The mountain bikers were represented by
Jim Hasenauer, founder of the International
Mountain Biking Assoc. (IMBA), Mike Goodman of CORBA, and Aaron
Kirsch of the BAC.
In the meantime, this backdoor move deliberately
excluded L.A. Recreation and Parks as well as many in City Council, as the BAC
knew they would receive a negative reception from these agencies. They
decided to bypass these agencies through the Department of Transportation and
City Planning. I believe it was hoped that by the time all this reached
the light of day, it would be a done deal.
When confronted with these “closed” meetings,
excluding the public, a spokesperson for BAC declared that public meetings on
mountain biking were “too hostile” claiming that there had been threats of
violence in the 2000 Working Group
meetings. Later checking on extensive records from those meetings showed
no such threat was made.
On April 15, 2009, the
representatives met at City Hall along with 40 other concerned Park stakeholders.
The reason was to "mediate" Mountain Bike use on City Park Trails . Most felt that there was nothing to “mediate” as
the matter was settled in 2000. Nothing had changed in the Park, if
anything it was more crowded with users than ever. The idea of
introducing a fast moving wheeled vehicle onto City park trails was ludicrous.
It was pointed out to the BAC and the mountain bikers that they had access to
well over 1.500 miles of trails surrounding and within the City
boundaries, while we were defending our last 100 miles of bike free trails
within the City.
The people in the audience were not allowed to comment
as it was declared a “closed” meeting. Nearly 40 attendees were present
for the meeting, composed of Neighborhood Councils, Homeowner Assoc. the Press,
concerned equestrians, a running club and Sierra Club members. Both the
hiker/equestrian representatives and members of the stakeholder audience felt
at the end of this first meeting that this whole Osprey meeting was a bit of
Kabuki Theatre, as the outcome was predetermined, and their rough draft of
their “recommendations” was probably already written.
It was the feeling of the panel that to allow mountain
bikes on any portion of a City trail would of course have to be achieved by changing
the City Ordinance that presently forbids this. Once the Ordinance was
changed, it would open the door to discrimination lawsuits for access
ultimately to all City park trails. Despite claims by the BAC that
Griffith Park and other major regional parks were “Off the Table”, we
recognized a slippery slope.
On May 13, 2009, there was a second mediation meeting
where again public money was used to fly in the Boulder consultants. The anger
of the panel (except for the mountain bikers) was considerable. The secrecy and
manipulations were disgusting. Public participation was once again excluded,
although dedicated Stakeholders attended nonetheless.
Shortly into the second meeting, Lynn Brown of ETI
made a statement that the equestrian groups were totally opposed to changing
the City Ordinance for any City park to allow bikes on dirt trails. This
was followed by Joe Young of the Sierra Club reading a similar statement
opposing any change in the Ordinance. This “mediation”
failed utterly as both Sierra Club reps and the equestrian reps unequivocally
opposed any changes to the current City ordinance on park dirt trails.
The hikers and equestrians stood in unprecedented
solidarity. It was a historic moment for both the equestrians and Sierra Club
to join together.