Mountain Biking is at a Weird Place

Fully Rigid, 12/29/24: Part 3 of 4

Mountain Biking is at a Weird Place: Is MTB Slip Slidin’ Away? (Part 3 of 4)

Down in Arkansas, the National Forest decision-makers have created new policy that allows Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes on trails. The exact thing that mountain biking organizations said would not happen has happened.

Throttle bikes are now permitted on national forest trails in the USA.

Who cares, you say? I do.

Who cares, you say? Other people do.

Who cares, you say? Why do you not care?

Why care?

Slippery slope just got slippery-er.

Status quo just got rocked.

Now that one forest service district office said yes to throttle bikes, in policy circles/history, it likely means that other public lands managers would be more likely to say, let’s do it here, too. You know, like, if we can “develop” public lands here for natural resource extraction, we can do it there, too. If they can develop public lands recreational opportunities there, we can do it here, too.

That’s more or less how public lands policy history has gone for the past, oh, let’s say, a century or so.

Precedent setting, you might say.

What happens when more e-bikes, including throttle bikes end up on trails? They will. It’s happening now. I alone have seen throttle bikes on trails around San Diego city and up in our local mountains on trails where they are not permitted.

Here’s the bigger question:

What happens when other trail user groups begin to lump all bikers into one category? If mountain biking organizations admit (and they do/will, if you ask them on the side and off record) that public lands managers do not have the expertise/budget/personnel to enforce Class 1-only on trails, how is it possible for them to regulate no throttle bikes allowed on trails?

(But wait, throttle bikes are now permitted on trails in federal public lands.)

This entire time, public lands managers, for the most part, have turned their heads. Can you blame them? They don’t have the capacity to stand at trail heads and enforce Class 1 only.

What happens when more and more motorbikes end up on trails and hikers and equestrians and trail runners and mountain bikers get perturbed by the increased presence of motor bikers on trails?

Could it possibly be that all 2-wheeled trail users will be considered the same and, given the potential size of the non-2-wheeled lobbyists, as a combined collective of sort, might they have greater interests and that maybe, just maybe, land managers might look around and say, well, it’s much easier to simply say no bikes of any kind allowed on trails, that it’s easier to manage because/besides we can’t tell the difference between bikes because some of these motorbikes look like mountain bikes but they’re not because if you look closely, the motor is hidden and well, out on the trail they are causing user conflict and so, let’s just say no bikes on trails???

Won’t happen, mountain biking orgs and e-bikers are already saying.

Remember when you said Class 2s and 3s won’t be approved on trails on federal lands?

Fool me once … (but some of us are not fooled).

As more motorbikes appear on trails, and they are and it will continue, will 50 years of mountain biking advocacy work go down the drain in some places?

I’m certain that no mountain biker, or former mountain biker who is now an e-biker, wants to see throttle bikes on trails. Hikers, equestrians and other trail user groups on public lands don’t either.

Remember—many promoters of Class 1 e-bikes said it would never happen, that throttle bikes would never be approved on trails in federal/public lands. We know now that it can happen, as policy.

The slippery slope is real.

It just got more real.

Part 4 of 4 is coming up next.

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Fully Rigid is a monthly column by James Murren about Mountain Biking Issues within the Mountain Biking Community.