Green light for green stickers
Now that Assembly Bill 628 has Governor Jerry Brown’s signature, Inyo County has the go-ahead to finalize and implement maps for an adventure trail for OHV enthusiasts visiting the area.
The new law allows for a five-year pilot project in Inyo County to develop a trail for green sticker vehicles that will link some county roads to recreation. While it is dubbed the ATV Adventure Trail, Dick Noles, President of Advocates for Access to Public Lands, stated, “if it’s green stickered, it [OHV] can ride on it.” Red stickered vehicles will not be allowed on the Adventure Trail.
Vehicles using the trail will need a working headlight, taillight and brake light, and drivers will need to have a valid driver’s license and helmet. Green-stickered vehicles will only be allowed to use the route during daylight hours and a speed limit of 35 miles per hour will be enforced.
Even with all the restrictions, Noles was audibly excited about the passage of the bill.
“We’re going to start slow and easy; this is a brand-new project,” he said. “We have a whole lot of work to do, and if we don’t make it work in five years it goes away.” The bill has a sunset clause in case the pilot project is not well received.
Noles and AAPL Vice- President Randy Gillespie have been working on AB 628 and its passage for four years. The goal is to produce a map for Inyo County that shows green-stickered OHV users where to interconnect through county roads to get to goods and services, such as gas, lodging, and vehicle parts, or to connect to other public lands.
No new infrastructure will be necessary for the pilot project, Gillespie said. Existing county roads that all agencies agree to use just need to be redesignated as combined use.
“We want to provide a family friendly experience,” Gillespie said. “We want people to be able to leave from their campgrounds and head out onto an adventure.”
“ATV recreation has not been corralled until this point,” Noles added. At least not the way that other sports such as skiing or mountain biking have been, he said. These sports have designated areas where enthusiasts are told to go and play. Recreationists are told where they are allowed to go and what commodities are available to them.
“I want to make them [OHV users] feel welcome and legitimate, that’s why I did this,” Noles explained.
“To date, there has never been a clear map of where people can go and recreate [for OHV],” Gillespie said. “We want to show people where to go rather than have them sprawled out all over the place.
“It’s not for kids on dirt bikes to go ripping up and down streets,” he continued, referencing some of the concerns he has heard regarding the trail. “It’s not open to every road out there.”
And, as stated, there is limitation to green-stickered vehicles, which will reduce the amount and types of bikes even eligible to use the trail since many dirt bikes have red stickers.
AAPL has already been working on the Adventure Trail Map and a draft is currently available. The public is welcome to stop by Golden State Cycle where copies of the draft map can be viewed. Gillespie, owner of Golden State, is also available to answer any questions the public might have.
“We want input and feedback,” Gillespie encouraged.
The idea of an adventure trail is not new, according to Gillespie, who researched other Adventure Trails out there to help determine what could work in Inyo County.
“We modeled our local idea after the Utah Paiute Trail, which has similar demographics, even though it deals with 16 communities, not four” Gillespie said. The Inyo County Adventure Trail will link Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop. “We didn’t reinvent the wheel we just lubricated it.”
One item that AAPL did have to reinvent, however, was the length allowed for the combined use roads. Existing law already allowed the designation of a highway (a county road is considered a highway if it receives federal funding for maintenance, Noles said), or a portion of highway, for the combined use of regular vehicular traffic and off-highway motor vehicles under certain circumstances. However, the current cap on the length of that combined use road is three-mile intervals.
With a county as large as Inyo (it’s the second largest county in the US in area but only 2 percent of it is inhabited, according to the language in AB 628), three miles is not adequate to get from goods and services to campgrounds to public lands.
“Three miles would only get you halfway across the valley,” Noles explained. “Ten miles allows me to reach out and get to the public BLM lands.”
AB 628 allows this 10-mile cap in the pilot program.
For the next five years the pilot program can be tweaked and massaged. By Jan. 1, 2016, Inyo County will have to prepare and submit a report to the Legislature evaluating the pilot project. Input from public hearings is required to be included in the report.
“If all goes well then it stays forever and the sunset clause goes away,” Gillespie said.
Contact Gillespie for further information at 760.872.1570.
