Sounding (the silent sports) Alarm [11.06]
Causes for concern & action
NAMAKAGON RESIDENTS DEBATE NEW ATV ROUTES
In April, the own of Namakagon Town Board of Supervisors designated additional town roads as ATV routes. In response, a group of residents in this area of northwestern Wisconsin especially popular amongst mountain bikers and cross-country skiers, met October 9 to air their concerns. The residents felt opening more roads to ATVs was done without regard to
land use surveys and a prevailing vision that the Namkagon area should not be further developed and promoted for ATV use.
Requests by residents to have the subject included on a town meeting agenda was declined by town board chairman Robert Rasmussen. So the ad hoc committee utilized a state statute that allows residents to force a special meeting by gathering the signatures of at least 10 percent of the total number of people voting in that town in the last general election. This was
done and the hearing was held October 9.
About two dozen people spoke at the 90-minute hearing offering statements in favor and against the designation of town roads as ATV routes. Those in opposition complained ATVs are noisy, polluting, incompatible with other recreational trail users and harmful to the local nonmotorized tourism economy. The prevailing theme was "What is the vision for the Namakagon area and the public forests surrounding it?" Rasmussen and town supervisors Art Schultz
and Vern Linder were in attendance at the meeting, but did not speak.
Routes approved at the April meeting included Lost Land Lake Road (FR 203 or Rustic Road) to the boundary of the Town of Spider (where the road is not designated as an ATV route), Ghost Creek Road (FR 204), Garmisch Road (paved) and Old Namakagon Road. The town hall parking lot was also designated an ATV trail head.
In a letter sent to town residents alerting them of the meeting, the ad hoc committee requested that
these routes be reviewed and rescinded. The issue was set to be discussed by the town board at its October 17 meeting after this issue went to press.
Previously approved ATV routes include Rock Lake Road (FR 207) and FR 191. The town of Namakagon includes popular silent sports trails including the Rock Lake Ski Trail and the Namakagon Cluster of the CAMBA mountain bike trails as well as the Forest Lodge Nature Trail, the Rock Lake Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized Area and the Mary Griggs-Burke
estate, now a part of the national forest, through which these routes run.
92 WISCONSIN BIKE/PED PROJECTS GO UNFUNDED
The Badger State Trail, along with 91 other bicycle/pedestrian projects in communities throughout the state, will go unfunded by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) over the next two years.
The Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin explained that much of the funding shortfall is because the state only spends about 30 percent of the funds that
the federal government designates for Transportation Enhancements (TE). The state could spend over $30 million every two years on these projects – trails, paths and bike lanes – but instead provided $9.8 million. The WisDOT instead uses the funding for projects like highways.
In recent years, WisDOT has added token amounts back to the TE program through a program called Surface Transportation Program-Discretionary (STP-D), but those efforts were eliminated by the Joint Finance Committee
in the state budget process.
Bicycle/pedestrian projects reduce crashes through safety improvements; encourage bicycling and walking at a time when obesity, diabetes and heart disease have grown to truly epidemic levels; reduce our reliance on foreign oil and improve air quality; support economic development by bringing more bicycling tourism dollars to our state (currently estimated at over $1 billion per year); and help support the $550-million Wisconsin bicycling industry.
"Transportation Enhancements is a great deal and the state is being shortsighted by not funding the program to the maximum federally allowed amount," said Dar Ward, executive director of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin. "Bicycling and walking can contribute to a better society and healthier citizens. The cost is a drop in the bucket of the state transportation budget. The amount of money we are talking about is essentially the margin of error for your average highway project, but it can
make a huge impact on local communities."
The 2005-2007 total budget for the WisDOT was $5.8 billion. TE funds amounted to less than 0.2 percent of the transportation budget. If the TE program was fully funded, it would still only amount to about 0.3 percent of the state transportation budget.
BWCA FRIENDS APPLAUD RULING ON ROADLESS RULE
Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness celebrated U.S. District Judge Laporte's September 20 reinstatment of the Roadless Area
Conservation Rule banning road construction and other development in roadless national forestlands.
"Sixty-two thousand acres of those roadless lands are in northern Minnesota," said John Roth, executive director for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, "and most of those lands are adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where they can provide wonderful recreation opportunities and wildlife habitat in the unfragmented peace of roadlessness."
Beginning in 1999, the
Roadless Area Conservation Rule instructed the U.S. Forest Service to develop science-based regulations that would provide long-term protection for inventoried roadless areas. During the rule-making process, the U.S. Forest Service held over 600 public meetings and received an unprecedented number of comments. In Minnesota alone, the rule-making received more than 31,000 comments.
In an unusual summary judgment, Laporte agreed with 20 environmental groups and four states by ruling that the
Bush Administration failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before making changes to the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The judge's ruling stops the Bush Administration's plans to open to logging up 58 million acres of public lands in 38 states and Puerto Rico.
"Laporte's ruling is a flat dismissal of the Bush administration's disregard of the wishes of millions of Americans who care deeply about saving our last wild roadless places," Roth said. "Minnesota's
roadless wild lands are safe once again."
The Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness' mission is to protect, preserve and restore the wilderness character of the BWCAW and the Quetico-Superior ecosystem.
CHICAGO RELEASES LANDMARK COMPLETE STREETS POLICY
The city of Chicago released a landmark Complete Streets Policy on October 10 that for the first time mandates that all users, including pedestrians and bicyclists, must be accommodated in all transportation
projects.
Chicago's Complete Streets Policy envisions streets where "even the most vulnerable children, elderly and persons with disabilities can travel safely within the public right of way.
"The safety and convenience of all users of the transportation system, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, freight and motor vehicle drivers shall be accommodated and balanced in all types of transportation and development projects and through all phases of a project," the policy
states.
According to a multiagency document issued by the city, the policy is expected to be implemented in a variety of ways that have been advocated by Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and its Healthy Streets Campaign.
The policy calls for pedestrian improvements like bulb-out curb extensions for crosswalks, countdown crossing signals, median refuges and retiming signals to minimize pedestrian delay and conflicts. It also calls for reclaiming street space for bicycle lanes through the
use of "road diets."
The Complete Streets Policy is part of the city's Safe Streets for Chicago program, which calls for stepped-up traffic enforcement, crosswalk awareness campaigns for motorists, new crosswalk safety technologies, researching and identifying trouble spots to be rectified and reducing statutory speed limits on low-volume residential streets. | 
