Silent Sports Sounds Off

By a 27-4 landslide vote, the Outagamie County Board last night designated as nonmotorized the 22.8-mile, yet-to-be developed Seymour to New London Trail.

The decision ended a months-long debate over whether the trail should be open to ATVs, and thus unappealing to hikers and unrideable for bicyclists, or a key connector trail for several existing nonmotorized trails in east-central Wisconsin (the Wiouwash, Friendship, Mountain Bay and Fox River state trails).

The county board ought to be congratulated for giving the issue reasoned consideration. An overwhelming majority of the board concluded that the Seymour to New London Trail is best suited for nonmotorized recreation. The vote reflects the majority of likely users and the trail’s potential as a connector for a great regional network of hiking and bicycling trails.

Thanks largely to the grassroots organizing by Fox Cities Greenways Inc., the Fox Valley Chapter of the Sierra Club, Bicycling Federation of Wisconsin, Pacesetters Running Club and many area residents and many individuals, the trail will be available to the majority of outdoor recreationists. (As a silent sports trail advocate, avid trail runner and cyclist in adjacent Waupaca County, I was more than a bit interested in seeng this campaign succeed.)

Last night’s county board debate was remarkable for several reasons. But the number of supervisors who said they had been persuaded by our side was most gratifying. One supervisor said he had received 20 letters and every one of them argued for keeping the trail nonmotorized.

Now comes the hard work, however. A state grant of $180,000 for trail development is on hand, but we’ll be lucky if that gets half of the trail built. Because snowmobiling will be allowed on the trail in the winter, the trail will be eligible for state snowmobile maintenance funds.

A number of us are already talking about forming a Friends group to help see the project through, provide volunteer maintenance and promote the trail. We are open to working with anyone else interested in making the trail the success we know it can be.

As I told one of the leading ATV proponents and a Black Creek resident after last night’s vote, “Hopefully, we’ll see eachother on the trail. That’s possible now.” He’ll have to leave his ATV at home, but he’ll be welcome to walk and pedal a trail that’s safe for him, his kids, grandparents and everyone in between.

Again, congratulations to the county board, which showed tremendous foresight, and to my fellow nonmotorized trail advocates. It’s nice to win once in awhile.

To the ATVers who are disappointed in the vote, I sincerely hope we can work together on this trail. If you decide to pursue an appropriately located and contained ATV park, you can count on me to support that project. Good luck to you.

– Joel Patenaude

The strong public belief that ATV riders and nonmotorized folks ought to have seperate trails may have convinced a committee of east-central Wisconsin’s Outagamie County supervisors to recommend against mixing the two on a yet undeveloped rail trail.

This afternoon, the county airport/property committeee voted 3-2 to keep ATVs off the Seymour-New London Trail. The vote was a lot closer than public opinion on the issue. In an online poll conducted over the weekend with the results published in this morning’s Appleton Post-Crescent, more than 74 percent of respondents said ATVers, bicyclists and pedestrians should not mix.

The newspaper was prompted to conduct the poll by an ongoing debate over whether the 22.8-mile Seymour-New London Trail should be either nonmotorized (allowing bicycling and walking, but also winter snowmobiling) or “multiuse” (the same but with year-round ATVing added).

The newspaper didn’t mention the Seymour-New London Trail in the question it posed. Instead it asked more generally, “Should all-terrain vehicles be allowed on recreational trails used by bicyclists and walkers?”

The results of the poll – open between Friday morning and Monday evening – were as follows:

With 503 votes cast, 25.6 percent said, “yes, ATV users deserve more trails” and 74.4 percent said, “No, ATVs should be on their own trails.”

That was the result despite a link to the poll and a call for votes on the Wisconsin ATV Association messageboard. The nonmotorized majority carried the day.

But if you think the poll results will convince WATVA and an area ATV club to build trails where they actually make sense instead of turning a prime regional bicycling rail-trail connector into a noisy motorized speedway, think again.

And if you think the 36-member Outagamie County Board will automatically follow the committee’s lead when it discusses use of the trail on March 25, as is expected, then that too would be a naive assumption.

We won this round, but the trail has not yet been saved. Stay tuned.

– Joel Patenaude