Statement for Cache County Council Public Hearing on the Smithfield
to USU Trail Proposal, Feb. 14, 1995   

Bob Bayn, North Logan

Thank you for this opportunity.  I am speaking with the general
support of an ad-hoc group of citizens who are interested in plans
for transportation cycling.

This trail proposal represents a progressive idea which has been
inappropriately applied to our local situation.

The canal system is undoubtedly the basis for the physical
settlement and development of our community.  The system has always
required access for maintenance and for use of the water.  That
access has always been over adjacent private land.  

The neighborliness and generosity of the property owners, in
allowing the public to use that access as a travel route, is now
being turned against those owners, threatening to deprive them of
privacy and control.  I wonder what chilling effect it would have
had on that tradition of access if pioneer property owners had
foreseen this proposal.

Last Saturday, I toured the route by bicycle.  Only two short
portions are currently closed to public access.  I saw a number of
very nearby homes, one close enough to touch.  In some residential
locations both canal banks are fenced, resulting in an alley-like
corridor.  


The proposal would create a facility with potential dangers for the
projected mix of recreationists.  In many rural locations the
access trail is narrow, raised on steep banks and bounded by barb-
wire fence.  

Any failure to negotiate a curve or a passing conflict involving
fast-moving wheeled recreationists could send someone off the
pavement, down a bank and into water or rusty barb-wire.  

The plan includes no committment or capability to provide a law
enforcement presence to give aid or to regulate the behavior of
trail users.

There are 13 intersections between the trail and roads.  At each
one, barriers must be constructed to deny public access to motor
vehicles and prevent unregulated recreationists from darting out
into road traffic.  The barriers must allow passage of canal
maintenance and service vehicles.

Privacy and safety are concerns that I have encountered as I have
explored the impact of my own concern about the proposal.  This
proposal seeks "alternative transportation" funding provided by the
federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.  In order
to do so, the proposed trail is presented as a transportation
facility under the mistaken assertion that all cycling is both
recreational and utilitarian.

Cache County and its communities could use a little encouragement
of cycling as a viable alternative transportation choice for its
citizens.  This proposal provides very little encouragement.  The
trail route would be attractive to a very few travellers going from
very few points of origin to very few destinations.  

If the trail were used as part of an individual's longer travel
route, rights and access and skills to use the existing road
network would still be required.  This trail would create 13 new
traffic intersections where trail travellers must yield and
dismount to negotiate as many as 26 barricades.  Many of the
crossings are diagonal and a few are at road corners.  

Only the most fearful, unskilled and uneducated cyclists would
forsake a direct route on the existing road network for a route
with frequent stops, frequent yields to crossing traffic,
infrequent maintenance and unregulated fellow route users.

The existing roads do provide a usable network for a number of
citizens who do safely and efficiently meet many of their
transportation needs on a bicycle.  That number could be enlarged
if education, promotion and enforcement were proposed along with
some design standards and end-point facilities.

This proposal, and a previously-funded grant proposal, have spawned
bike/pedestrian master plans that were conceived in the offices of
planners who show no evidence of local transportation cycling
experience.  

The good that I see in this proposal is that it has drawn the
attention of transportation cyclists to the need and opportunity
for supportive municipal planning.  Transportation cyclists should
be a part of that planning process.  

Now alerted, we intend to have, or make, an opportunity to
participate in that planning.  The planning should be accomplished
to meet local goals, not just to provide the bureaucratic
groundwork for grant applications.

In summary, I believe that the proposal offers little of value for
the transportation purposes under which it seeks funding.  It would
create a recreational facility with many hazards.  And, to achieve
its goals, it would usurp the rights of canal-bank landowners and
mock the generosity they have historically shown to their neighbors
and fellow citizens.  For any of these reasons, you should not
support this trail proposal; but you should support local
alternative transportation planning with citizen participation.

Thank you for this opportunity to present my views.