2006 Draft UCSC Bike Plan Released

The 2006 UCSC draft bike plan has been released:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/taps/pages/bike_plan.html

A review of the plan shows that UC has made provisions for LEGAL off road single track trails in their plan.

Section 2 recognizes the recreational opportunities for students and the community by allowing single track trails. Maintaining an off-road network of trails is going to require involvement from the mountain biking community in the design and maintenance of environmentally sustainable trails.

Section 4.3 discusses a bicycle licensing program as the foundation for education, outreach and enforcement. I would love to get clarity on the position of off road bikes and the licensing program.

In section 5, the plan calls for the formation of a Campus Bicycle Committee (CBC) to address the future adaptation of the plan. There are staff, student and community positions available on this committee and I hope that we can have the interests of mountain biking represented.

The bike plan is accepting written comments to UCSCbikeplan@ppc.ucsc.edu I urge you all to write to support the plan to allow mountain biking at UC. They will be accepting comments until the end of June.

Last year representatives from MBOSC had a serries of meetings with UC officials and land managers where we presented a proposal for legitimizing the UC trail network. I'm happy to say that the draft proposal incorporates many of the ideas in the proposal.

This plan is great news for mountain biking in Santa Cruz. I hope that we can count on the mountain biking community to help us out in the design, maintenance and monitoring of a future legal trail system at UCSC.