Right now, it’s not very feasible to attract an audience to a Park City Council meeting. But when it is, the city staff want to get public input on the use of e-bikes on the trail system.
Heinrich Deters, the city’s Trails and Open Space Manager, has a recent survey showing locals feel that a current city ordinance is on the right track.
Deters told KPCW that the use of e-bikes is growing. The city’s survey has attracted attention from other areas, including Wasatch County and even Draper.
The survey shows that over two-thirds of the respondents—67 percent—support the current ordinance, which prohibits the use of Class I e-mountain bikes on any single-track trails. Exceptions are granted in the case of mobilty disabilities and those over 65 years old.
Another finding was that 37 percent favored keeping the ordinance as is. A somewhat higher percentage, 42 percent, supported expanding e-bikes to some trails. Only 13 percent favored allowing the e-bikes on all trails.
The opinion on allowing a pilot program to expand the use was just about split. Fifty percent were in favor, and 42 percent were opposed.
Deters admitted that he came up with the pilot program idea, somewhat prematurely, last year.
“In August, I think I got a little bit too far out in front of my skis with Council, and we were promoting a possible pilot program in Round Valley, just for a couple of months to kinda collect more data. And Council was adamantly against that. They really wanted to hear what the community had to say in survey results, which prompted, obviously, this survey. And then we would go back and I would ask that question again.”
He said the staff recommends Round Valley as the site for a pilot program.
“Again, I don’t wanna get in front of Council. But it is an area that sorta is geographically separated from the rest of the system. We built the Park City trail system a lot—as you’ll remember in the 90’s—a lot of it had to do with connectivity. We were trying to get one area connected to another. And so you want to have an area where you have access points, where you can actually do onsite surveys and interviews with people as they come in and out of the system. And then you can have sort of a controlled area where you can understand what’s going on.”
The survey also mentioned concerns that respondents have about e-bikes on the trails, including safety, and conflicts with other users.
“The Park City community does see more and more people on the trail system. And different uses, and this possibly being a new use, with higher speeds and less-experienced riders, are some of the claims that are made. I think that is sorta the impetus of the concern for a lot of the users is, they’re able to go faster. And the user could be less-experienced going uphill or down.”
One concern about unskilled riders is that they could find themselves stranded in remote areas.
Finally, on a related topic, Deters said they aren’t doing much at the moment on Bonanza Flat.
“ We did a lot of monitoring up there, and we did start to put in some grooming and Nordic opportunities. We did it a lot in the sense of preparing possibly for next winter. So we wanted to understand how the equipment would work, what the proposed trails, how they were packed, etc. So we didn’t see a lot of use. But we were sorta taking a dry run, if you will, staff-wise, to understand what would be the challenge of providing such services.”
Park City Trails and Open Space Manager Heinrich Deters.
The link to the e-bike survey is at https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/556168/E-MTB_Staff_Report_20200319.pdf
