Silent Sports Sounds Off

Whether ATVs should have access to the still undeveloped New London to Seymour rail-trail in east-central Wisconsin was the subject of a public hearing in Black Creek last night. The Appleton Post-Crescent covered it.

I spoke at the meeting to highlight the trail’s potential as a link to the Wiouwash, Friendship, Mountain Bay and Fox River state trails – all nonmotorized and in various stages of development – creating a northeast regional hub for bicycling tourism.

But as an isolated ATV trail, this 22.8-mile stretch would become a speedway to nowhereville.

– Joel Patenaude

If you have something you want to say about the plan to site 60 miles of trail within the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest, the deadline for submitting comment is tomorrow.

The Rhinelander area newspaper published a reminder and background on the issue.

The Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin issued a press release this morning in response to Gov. Jim Doyle’s partial veto of a funding mechanism for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

In the release, BikeFed Executive Director Jack Hirt confirmed the details included in the previous post (scroll down).

Hirt added that he will seek a meeting with the governor. According to Hirt, during the last budget cycle over 90 worthwhile projects throughout the state were not funded due to lack of money in the budget.

“These projects alone show a need for over $50 million in funding for bike and pedestrian facilities,” Hirt said in the release. “Our proposal for $19 million in a separate line item would not have met all of the needs of local governments and citizens across the state for safe places to bike and walk, but it would have demonstrated the state’s willingness to at least move toward meeting those needs.”

– Joel Patenaude

Skimming Gov. Doyle’s “veto message” this morning, I found a confusing and worrisome change made to how state bicycle and pedestrian facilities will be funded.

While Doyle described such spending as “important,” he nevertheless eliminated appropriations for bike and pedestrian projects coming from congestion mitigation and air quality improvement (CMAQ) and transportation enhancement (TE) programs.

Jack Hirt, executive director of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, said late Friday afternoon that he, too, was trying to understand the implications of the governor’s line-item veto. But he sounded reasonably sure ground was not lost.
“We have no reason to believe we’ve lost funding” in the 2007-2009 budget, Hirt said. “We’re confident we’re no worse off than we were in the last budget cycle.”

The prospects for hiking and biking trails and nonmotorized lanes would have been more clear had Doyle just allowed the appropriations to go into a new fund specifically for bike/ped projects only. But Doyle decided instead to leave that money where it is, forcing bike/ped planners to continue to compete with advocates for pollution control, main street beautification and whatnot.

It is entirely appropriate to dedicate congestion mitigation and air quality improvement funds to bike/ped facilities. Afterall, if you’re serious about trying to get more residents of traffic-congested and smog-choked metro areas to forego driving a bit, you have to give those folks an alternative; i.e. safe routes to bike and walk.

TE money has historically been tapped to help pay for scores of nonmotorized trails and bridges throughout the state. The BikeFed has worked hard to increase this use of TE funding.

On average, 30 percent of CMAQ funds and 55 percent of TE money have gone toward bike/ped projects, Hirt said. That came to $13.8 million in the last biennium.

The BikeFed lobbied for $19.1 million – a 38 percent increase – in spending in the 2007-09 budget to cover scores of worthy projects for which there has not been enough money in recent years.

“Now we can only hope for what has been historically spent on bike and pedestrian projects,” Hirt said.

Although BikeFed did not secure the 38 percent increase in funding it sought, it appears there will be 27 percent more money available for these oprojects.

One reason is that the new budget the governor signed includes, for the first time, a “bike and pedestrian” line item and its funded with $2.7 million in surface transportation discretionary funds (STP-D) – a source that was unavailable for the last two years.

Hirt said he hopes communities wanting to create bike plans and maps can apply for that reallocated STP-D money. But until the DOT provides clarification, he said, “it is unclear whether that can be spent on anything butinfrastructure.”

In his veto message, Doyle said he would direct his transportation secretary “to work with interested parties to ensure that funds from both the existing appropriations and new appropriations are used for bicycle and pedestrian facility projects to the extent possible and appropriate.”

Clear as mud, eh?

On Monday the BikeFed will provide further analysis of the budget and a plan to move forward, Hirt said.

– Joel Patenaude

For the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, the $60,000 take at its gala last week is twice the amount raised for the nonprofit advocacy orgnization at the event last year.

A big chunk of that was singlehandedly contributed by Jeff Frehner, CEO of Madison-based Pacific Cycles. He bid $10,000 to win a second-hand suitcase autographed by gala guest Phil Liggett, “the voice” of the Tour de France. For the details, read Tom Held’s “Off The Couch” report.

The BikeFed’s courting of corporate contributors, including the Saris Cycling Group which hosted the gala, has been controversial among some members – so much so it has prompted write-in campaigns for seats on the board. Mike Ivey of The Capital Times recently wrote a balanced piece on the insurgency and debate.

The bulk of the BikeFed’s funding is still said to come from membership dues, but that just points out how important it is for the organization to grow its 2,700-member list. Many, many more bicyclists than that benefit from the group’s lobbying for bike lanes and trails and safety programs.

So if you’re not yet a BikeFed member, become one today.

– Joel Patenaude

Seeing as Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle hasn’t yet signed off on the state budget passed by the Legislature Tuesday and he retains line-item veto authority, I called his office at 608/266-1212.

I urged the governor to remove the following spending items from the budget:

1) $1.7 million for building ATV trails in the Northwoods, including in the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest.

There are some 8,000 miles of ATV trails in this state already and, according to a recent survey of Wisconsin ATV owners, fewer than 6 percent of the state’s adult population actually ride ATVs on public land, and of those that do, less than 20 percent complain that the trails available to them are too few or too crowded.

The ATV fund has a running surplus – the clubs left $1 million unspent this year and previous years – so to grant them another $1.7 million is gratuitous and far exceeds the demand for ATV trails. Such spending is even more maddening when you consider the underfunding of nonmotorized trails. Eighty-five percent of outdoor recreationists in this state prefer nonmotorized acitivities, according to the DNR, yet scores of bike trail development projects go unfunded year after year.

And don’t get me started on the fact that the Natural Resources Board has yet to take up the issue of 60 miles of ATV trails proposed for the NH-AL. We don’t yet know if ATV trails will be approved, yet here we have $1.7 million being waved under the noses of the NRB and DNR.

2) Incentive grants of $25, $50 and $100 per mile of trail available to private land owners to allow ATVs to cross their property. This is nowhere near enough money to cover the damage ATVs do and therefore will not help shift ATV riding opportunities away from public parks and trails.

$25 to $100 per mile won’t cover the cost of fixing ATV damage like this.

My suspicison is that this incentive grant scheme is meant to be a replacement – and a sad one at that – for an ATV damage mitigation fund (as exists in Minnesota). The Special Legislative Committee on State Trails Policy recommended a modest $30,000 per year for this purpose taken from the ample funds available in the state ATV fund, but the draft legislation went nowhere. (I smell WATVA’s influence wafting from under the door of the backroom where this deal was made.)

If you have a spare minute to call the governor’s office at 608/266-1212, don’t hesitate to do so. To butter up the staff person you talk to, thank the governor for his leadership getting the Warren-Knowles Stewardship Fund reauthorized at a higher annual funding level.

– Joel Patenaude

A bridge on the Fond du Lac County segment of the Eisenbahn State Park Trail.

Several Fond du Lac County supervisors who just last December opposed opening the 12.5-mile Eisenbahn State Trail to winter ATV riding on a one-year trial basis decided last night to support the same request brought forward again by a local ATV club.

The county board voted 18-15 in favor of allowing ATVs on the trail only when it is 29 degrees or colder and there is not sufficient snow cover for snowmobiling.

The vote went against the recommendation of county planning and parks director Sam Tobias, Park Watch 2010 and an emergency medical doctor, the last of which warned that more serious injuries would likely occur if the trail were opened to ATV’ers.

– Joel Patenaude

Yeah, the Gitchi-Gami State Trail on the North Shore of Lake Superior was totally a waste of money. Photo by Eric Chandler.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) yesterday announced his “Golden Fleece” award recipients, an effort to put the spotlight on wasteful federal spending, ala Sen. Bill Proxmire before him.

Most of the “winners” deserve the public spanking they got. But then I read this in Ryan’s press release:

“At a time when the nation’s roads and bridges need attention – as demonstrated by the recent collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis – the federal government continues to divert large amounts of money to bike paths and other cosmetic projects that could be funded locally.”

First, I doubt that bridge and road maintenance money is lacking because of spending on bike paths. Second, I believe local communities do pony up to build bike paths, but often they can’t afford to fully fund such projects. Most state and federal grants for trail development require local matching funds anyway.

Lastly, I bristle at the suggestion that bike paths are unnecessary or “cosmetic” projects.

“Funding for trails: The anti-pork pork” was the headline for my column in the September 2005 issue of Silent Sports. I heralded the $286.4-billion, five-year federal transportation bill for its inclusion of a tiny percentage of trail development money. Minnesota garnered $120 million (including $16 million to complete the Mesabi, Munger and Gitchi-Gami paved trails) and Wisconsin got $40 million (including $25 million for Sheboygan County to create alternative transportation facilities).

Ryan might view these projects – including another $25 million for an alternative transportation pilot project in the Twin Cities – as pork benefiting U.S. Rep Jim Oberstar (D-Minnesota) and U.S. Rep Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin) who played key roles ushering the funding bill through Congress.

But I still contend this is “anti-pork pork” because it is money spent to encourage people to commute and run errands while simultaneously exercising which helps trim some of the pork they’d otherwise carry around.

Besides, given the state of the world today, any effort to get people to cut back on their production of greenhouse gases ought to be rewarded and replicated, not ridiculed.

– Joel Patenaude

Many unauthorized ATV routes and trails in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest will be closed under “travel management rule” planning by the U.S. Forest Service.

The USFS displays its new maps tonight at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, the last of a handful of open houses held in the past couple weeks.

“Based on a review of these maps on the website, I’d say that the initial proposal is very favorable toward nonmotorized interests. Motorized access, including trucks, appears to be quite limited across the region,” reports Ron Bergin, speaking only for himself as a private citizen (and not as the publisher of Cross-Country Skier magazine or as a mover and shaker for CAMBA, which he is).

Since ATV’ers are likely to be unhappy with the plan, Bergin said, “voicing support for it, if that’s how you view it, would be a good idea.”

A public comment form can be found here.

– Joel Patenaude

The resolution (discussed and published in the post below) supporting the continued prohibition on ATVs in the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest was tabled today by the Wisconsin Governor’s State Trails Council (STC).

A “dueling” resolution, written by council member and Wisconsin ATV Association President Randy Harden, was also set aside by a majority vote. Only Mike McFadzen, who represents cross-country skiers on the STC and authored the original resolution, voted against tabling the matter.

Had the STC voted on McFadzen’s resolution, I have little doubt it would have passed. Instead, the council chose to put off the acrimonious debate that would have certainly preceded a roll call.

A subcommittee, consisting of McFadzen, Harden and STC Chairman Dave Phillips, will try to work out a compromise resolution. I wouldn’t bank on it, given Harden’s belief that those who oppose ATVs in the NH-AL have a superiority complex.

The STC did resolve to take up the issue again at its next meeting in January – before the Natural Resources Board does the same later that month.

– Joel Patenaude