Parks pave way for increased e-bike use

Change to rules comes amid piqued administration interest in cycling.

By Christina MacIntosh

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTER

The National Park Service on Monday announced plans to bolster bicycle use across the park system by eliminating administrative obstacles to allowing e-bikes on roads, parking areas and trails in parks.

The proposed change would allow parks to open existing trails to e-bike use without undertaking an in-depth environmental analysis of potential impacts and 30-day public comment period, as is currently required under law. Instead, the agency has proposed that e-bikes be allowed in all places where cars are permitted, rather than requiring explicit permission from park superintendents.

The proposal would align with several executive orders, according to the announcement. That includes the same order that spurred the Park Service to reconsider the Moose-Wilson multi-use pathway. It is also consistent with orders related to “Unleashing prosperity through deregulation” and the executive order creating the Department of Governmental Efficiency, an early Trump administration effort to cut administrative costs and staff within the federal government.

The proposal comes amid a busy — and somewhat contradictory — time for the Trump administration and Park Service with respect to twowheeled transportation. In February, the Park Service drafted a plan with the Federal Highway Administration to remove protected bike lanes on the National Mall, a Park Service unit. In April, however, the Interior Department ordered Grand Teton National Park to reconsider a separated bike path along Moose-Wilson Road, which was scrapped in 2016 after an in-depth environmental analysis and extensive public comment. The Park Service approved the pathway in August.

Pro-bike and e-bike sentiments have cropped up in other agencies as well, as part of the administration’s focus on access. Last week, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to relax the process for allowing motorized vehicles on trails, including reclassifying “Class 1” e-bikes, which can go up to 20 miles per hour and don’t have a throttle, as bikes.

The Park Service proposal gels with the administration’s priority of increasing opportunities for recreation in parks, including more opportunities for biking “where appropriate,” according to the document.

Park advocates are still reviewing the details of the proposal, but are leery of the changes.

The National Parks Conservation Association has “long believed that e-bikes have a place on motorized roads and trails in national parks, but they are different from traditional bicycles and should be managed differently,” said Tucker Johnson, associate director of government affairs.

The Park Service also argued, in the proposal, that getting rid of regulatory requirements around ebikes will free up funding and staff time for other projects that benefit park visitors.

“It’s pretty frustrating to hear the federal government say they don’t have the staff time or resources to effectively manage something, when the reason they don’t have that is because they went through these cuts,” Johnson said.

Teton park, for its part, had been working to expand bike access prior to nudging from Washington. On Sunday, park officials partook in a celebration of the Sagebrush Connector Pathway, a new 0.8-mile stretch that connects Gros Ventre Junction to the Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club. The pathway cost $2.8 million, said Sam Petri, communications and advocacy director for Friends of Pathways.

Park officials are interested in building a pathway between the roundabout and the Gros Ventre Campground, as part of a project to repair the road, said Superintendent Chip Jenkins. That project is on hold for three or four years as the park completes emergency roadwork elsewhere, he said. Despite the pushback against the Moose-Wilson pathway, conservationists are not universally opposed to bike paths, said Joan Anzelmo, a former Teton park spokesperson, Park Service superintendent and member of the Friends of the Moose-Wilson Corridor, an organization opposed to the pathway project.

“All of us in the friends group support pathways,” Anzelmo said. “We just don’t support them in the Moose-Wilson corridor because of the resources at risk, primarily wildlife and archaeological resources.”

Contact Christina MacIntosh at 307-732-5911 or environmental@jhnewsandguide.com.