Yesterday morning Bike Couriers Bike Shop towed a coffin through the streets of downtown Louisville to protest an automobile accident that took the life of a pedestrian last week.
More importantly (and a lesson to be learned for any off-road enthusiasts who would like additional access on our PUBLIC trails) the cyclists stopped at the offices of the commonwealth’s attorney; the mayor and our police chief.
The group is asking the commonwealths attorney to start charging drivers with a felony in these situations. In additions, they let the mayor and police chief know that they fully support the “Keep Louisville Safe” initiative, which is a public awareness campaign the city started in May that includes cycling safety.
The lesson learned for off-road cyclists is that direct contact with our elected officials (from the mayor on down) as well as other high-ranking government officials and civic leaders, would go a long way towards ending Metro Parks decade long plus assault on mountain biking.
Mountain bikers could easily play a winning hand by pointing out that Metro Parks allows the fortunate few in our community (equestrians) access to nearly all of our dirt trails, but only allows the working family, that can only afford a bicycle, access to only parts of two parks and Waverly here in Jefferson County.
Metro Parks elitist approach to our public trails, as well as their mistreatment of mountain biking needs to end. They’ve kicked us out of Jefferson Memorial Forest & Iroquois Park. They nearly kicked us out of Cherokee and almost ruined the trail system at Waverly.
In addition to not including mountain biking in their future plans at the highly publicized Bike Summitt, they’ve purposely tried to misuse grant funding we received for the trail system, and have proven to be poor and ineffective stewards of our limited resources.
Therefore, not only should we seek an end to their closed-door limited public input policy making, but we should also push for privatization of the entire parks department.
Privatization of park operations is a proven and effective way to improving park operations and lowering overall costs. In addition, privatization will also lead to improved service levels (maybe we could then see some trails actually get built by parks) while allowing our government to focus on its core responsibilities; such as health & safety.
