Tahoesers: DEADLINE Sunday 3/28/21! USFS about to ban ebikes and close Chimney Beach
tl;dr Read my summaries in the next couple messages, use anything you agree with, and submit a comment online before the weekend is over!
The new USFS Tahoe “Trails Plan” is a disaster. It doesn’t just ban ebikes from all but a few tiny, disconnected fragments of trail – it closes the Chimney Beach trail completely, to everyone!
(Of course, this happened because the USFS rightly concluded that ebikes have no significant impact – and a few equestrians sued. Just like the past 30 years of bicycle access fights, public lands are being held hostage by a tiny minority of rich people who want to keep everyone else out.)
This is worth fighting, even if you don’t think you care about ebike access! The reason mountain bike “activism” is so ineffective is because we compromise away most of our position before we even start – unlike the Sierra Club, equestrians, and HOHAs, who start with the position that bicycles should be banned everywhere, and stick to it. That’s why they win and we lose. If you’re on the fence about ebikes, or you think they’re “cheating”, please read my summary of why they absolutely belong, below – and remember, you’ll be old and broken someday, too. Remember how everyone dismissed dropper posts as a gimmick in the 2000s, and now everyone has one? Same thing.
In the “Basin Wide Trails Analysis Project #54566”, ebikes are banned from every trail you’d ever want to ride – including every trail that even TOUCHES the TRT at one end. There’s no way to legally ride on trails for an hour at a time. (Ebikes are even banned from Armstrong Connector, a trail which is car-shuttled hundreds of times each weekend, for the stated reason that "We think ebikes will ride up it and cause conflict." Obviously they think ebikes are really just motorcycles that can BRAAAP up unrideable uphills, instead of pedal-assist bicycles with less than half the power of the hair dryer you used this morning.)
If you wonder “So what do you think we should do about this besides complain, Mr. Smarty Pants?” I’ve proposed a great solution, which I’ve also summarized below. I hope some of you will add it to your comments!
It’s easy to comment, and it only takes a few minutes. Just read the summaries I’ve posted below, take the points that are most meaningful to you, and write your own comment based on them. You don’t have to live in the Basin to comment!
The deadline for comments is this Sunday, March 28.
Here is the link to “Basin Wide Trails Analysis Project #54566”, including maps:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=54566
Here is the link to the online comment form:
https://cara.ecosystem-management.or...?Project=54566
My full evaluation of “Basin Wide Trails Analysis Project #54566” is linked below (follow the link and hit the "Download This File" button). If the summaries below intrigue you and you want to know more, or you want to write a detailed comment, please read it!
http://www.filedropper.com/trailsplanproposal
Tahoesers: DEADLINE Sunday 3/28/21! USFS about to ban ebikes and close Chimney Beach
I’m pro horse, bike, hiker and embt.
Get out more, bitch less.