Helena Advocacy Alert

[evasive_MT]

If you ride in Helena, this should concern you. This week, the Helena citizen committee (HOLMAC) that advises our Parks & Rec Department balked at supporting a consensus plan for improving the Davis Gulch area. Instead of voting to recommend the plan a multi-use workgroup came up with after a year of meetings and site walks, they were instead very interested in a proposal from dissenting workgroup members. The difference: the dissenters' plan bans bikes from the southern portion of the DeFord Trail. It says bicycle use should go to a bike lane on Davis Gulch Road (how they propose to have the City establish a bike lane on a county gravel road didn't seem to be a concern). They're focused on making the trail accessible, and for them accessible = no bikes. The working group understood that the bike use here is mostly uphill or small kids with families, but the dissenting minority didn't accept that.

I don't need to tell you that removing existing use from an established trail is a worrying precedent. In this case, the City established the area as a park specifically for bicyclists and hikers in 1999 for the express purpose of getting them off the road.

Parks & Rec is taking comments on their 2022 workplan until the 23rd. If you can take a few minutes to express support for the working group proposal, and that the advisory committee's action isn't OK, that would be great. You can use this link:
https://beheardhelena.com/parks-and-...-projects-2021 or email directly to parksandrec at helenamt dot gov.

The working group's plan is solid. It discourages downhill bicycle traffic on the wide trail by putting a directional singletrack along the dirt jumps, fences off the jumps, and improves them. You can find it here: https://www.helenamt.gov/fileadmin/u..._With_Maps.pdf

The backstory here is that Helena mostly avoided use conflicts seen in other places for a long time. It's still very rare on the trails, but planning meetings are getting worse. A contingent of Helena's Boomer donor class flipped out over the directional bike trails on Mount Ascension. A letter signed by just 8 people convinced the City Commission to impose a moratorium on any new trail projects for several months in 2018-2019. They argue that recreation has to be balanced with conservation- fine (and what does that mean in the context of a city front-country park), but there's never any metric or goals for conservation. Just opposition to anything they see as a gain for mountain bikers. They occupy the most recent three appointments to this advisory committee, and just gained a seat on the City Commission. Helena mountain bikers are on the verge of losing trails we've had access to for decades. They've stated that goal publicly. I'm all for more accessible trails, and would even support pedestrian-only trails in the right circumstances. But exclusive-use trails should be additive, not carved out of existing uses.

[toast2266]

Submitted a comment. Hopefully they'll find their way to a good result.

It's the never ending problem that the people with the most time on their hands tend to be opinionated old people. And it's those people that end up working their way on to committees and councils and forcing the general public to abide by their dumb solutions to otherwise manageable problems.

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

Done and done. Adding a bike lane to Davis Gulch Road is damn near laughable.

[Dumbest Known Time]

Submitted my piece. I've been in school in Great Falls for the past half a year and riding trips to Helena were the saving grace of this summer. Several of my classmates are thinking hard about how to get to Helena after we graduate in large part because the trail network and support that the city has fostered is unlike anything that we've seen before. It would be a real shame if a small, angry contingent threatened that.

[detrusor]

Interesting. I happen to have a little insight into the other side…I think the real issue started with some fuckery about an ADA trail the was being bulldozed onto Mt Helena that was clearly just a veil for the bro’s to have an easy way to get their downhill bikes up the mountain. It was in no way accessible for handicapped or wheelchairs and when this was pointed out it was stopped.

Having watched this play out since the early 80’s I would say Helena and Prickly Pear Land Trust have been outstanding stewards and have avoided the conflicts that have shut down mountain biking on urban trail systems in a lot of other places. That said, they have failed to keep up with changing demographics in biking….but the increase in sliding through turns, cutting straight down between switchbacks and bombing trails used by families on foot is very real as well.


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