e-bikes work for some and not for others. I'm in the latter camp, but I also understand people wanting to use them. I happen to also think that they pose a _massive_ risk to sustainable access rights for the mountain bike community, but I will try to stay as objective as possible here.
Full transparency, I am an instructor for Evergreen here in Washington. I do not pretend to represent the organization's views nor do I have a right to claim that I do, but I am fully on board with the legislation that they have been supporting, especially given our local climate here in WA.
Mountain biking has been exploding here in recent years, and Evergreen has been at the forefront of the construction of new world-class trails. For those of you that have ridden or heard of the trails on Tiger Mountain just outside of Seattle, Evergreen is the sole reason those exceptional trails exist in the form that they do today.
We are fortunate to have places like Tiger that are on DNR land. We are also fortunate to have places like Tokul, Galbraith, and others that are on privately owned (or leased) logging land. Access to the privately owned land can be precarious, and that is the primary reason that I think we need to take this e-bike debate with a slow, steady hand. Call me paranoid, but I can imagine land owners who have granted access to horses and bikes in the past seeing other trail systems grappling with e-bikes, and shuttering trail access to their trails entirely for not wanting to deal with the grey area.
I think the title of the article may be a bit inflammatory, and is probably the cause of a lot of these negative comments that appear not to understand the article or what has actually been done. e-bikes are <u>not</u> banned by the legislation - they must be given permission by land managers to be ridden. If land managers do not want to open their doors to e-bikes, that is their choice. While that sucks for e-bike riders, it protects the access rights of other trail users while we grapple with this introduction of new motorized bikes out onto the trails.
March 9, 2018, 8:25 a.m. - babyzhendo
e-bikes work for some and not for others. I'm in the latter camp, but I also understand people wanting to use them. I happen to also think that they pose a _massive_ risk to sustainable access rights for the mountain bike community, but I will try to stay as objective as possible here. Full transparency, I am an instructor for Evergreen here in Washington. I do not pretend to represent the organization's views nor do I have a right to claim that I do, but I am fully on board with the legislation that they have been supporting, especially given our local climate here in WA. Mountain biking has been exploding here in recent years, and Evergreen has been at the forefront of the construction of new world-class trails. For those of you that have ridden or heard of the trails on Tiger Mountain just outside of Seattle, Evergreen is the sole reason those exceptional trails exist in the form that they do today. We are fortunate to have places like Tiger that are on DNR land. We are also fortunate to have places like Tokul, Galbraith, and others that are on privately owned (or leased) logging land. Access to the privately owned land can be precarious, and that is the primary reason that I think we need to take this e-bike debate with a slow, steady hand. Call me paranoid, but I can imagine land owners who have granted access to horses and bikes in the past seeing other trail systems grappling with e-bikes, and shuttering trail access to their trails entirely for not wanting to deal with the grey area. I think the title of the article may be a bit inflammatory, and is probably the cause of a lot of these negative comments that appear not to understand the article or what has actually been done. e-bikes are <u>not</u> banned by the legislation - they must be given permission by land managers to be ridden. If land managers do not want to open their doors to e-bikes, that is their choice. While that sucks for e-bike riders, it protects the access rights of other trail users while we grapple with this introduction of new motorized bikes out onto the trails.