Round Up

ROUND UP

JOE PARKHURST

BIKE BUREAU BOON

Tucked away in the bureaus of bureaucracy there often is a man or an agency that is doing something for motorcyclists. All the motorcyclist has to do is locate that man or agency.

CYCLE WORLD ran across the California Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Committee more by accident than anything else. And, that was a break. Through contact with the committee, CW discovered the group’s executive secretary, James E. Warren, who doubles as chief of the Planning and Development Division of the California State Department of Parks and Recreation.

The committee’s job is to foster development of horse trails, pedestrian trails and trails for motorized vehicles— i.e., motorcycles. Warren’s job is to provide the technical talent in planning for more trails for the state.

The committee has some pretty good ideas—such as the “linear park concept.” That is, a park needn’t be a lump of real estate into which people are jammed for picnic lunch on Sunday; a park can be a ribbon of scenic country along which that Sunday crowd can flow, ahorse, afoot or abike. Beautiful.

The state’s park planners also have come to the realization that twowheeled mechanized vehicles are here to stay. Thus, California has in the works two state parks that include specific areas for trailbike riding. Both of these areas are close to major Metropolitan areas, where they’ll do the most good. The two areas are the Point Mugu Recreational Area —north of Los Angeles, the other is just south of San Francisco.

The latter is Henry Coe State Park. Included in the park plan are 35 miles of horse trails, 15 miles of pedestrian trails and 20 miles of trails for buggies and bikes.

Why fewer miles of trail for machinery? The horse people in California long have had legislative aid in creating trails for their specific use. By comparison with the horse, the motorcycle is a relatively new creature, an animal without a voice in such important places as before the committee, or in Warren’s planning office.

Every state has, by one name or another, a parks and recreation department, the responsibility of which is to build and maintain public facilities, including trails. In every state, land on which to build trails is becoming ever more scarce.

It certainly behooves motorcyclists in all 50 states to seek out agencies such as California’s Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Committee, and to lend these groups a hand in creation of motorcycle (yes, horse and foot, too) trails for future generations of riders.

And, it would be all to the good if motorcyclists start NOW! Why? California park planner Warren has documented proof that a minimum of six calendar years is required to take a park from the planning stage through legislative and land acquisition stages, to final construction. This is the first month of 1969. If a park is planned tomorrow, the first bike will pass over its trails in 1975. The word is NOW!

It’s up to regional motorcycle clubs to riffle through the bureaus, to find the proper bureaucrats, and to make the pitch for some of those linear parks the people in California are talking about— and building.