County officials and public agree: Seymour-New London Trail ought to be nonmotorized
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