Calgary Mountain Bike Alliance

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CMBA Instrumental in new City Wide Cycling Policy

IMBA Trail News
May 1998

Calgary opens trails and adopts progressive policy
by Gary Sprung

After years of political organizing by the Calgary Mountain Bike Alliance, success dramatically arrived on April 6 when the Calgary, Alberta, City Council voted to approve a policy which opens trails in city parks to bicycling.

The first of 14 policy statements is the key: "Trails will be available for users except where defined by bylaw or City of Calgary documents, or in extenuating circumstances where types of use have to be separated for environmental preservation and/or personal safety reasons." This is, in essence, an "Open, Unless Closed" policy, which is the approach IMBA advocates. Implicit in the statement is the notion that the park managers will not selectively favor hiking, equestrian or bicycling uses, unless there are some very sound reasons to do so.

Policy number nine adds, "Trail closure, to all users, will be employed only after careful consideration of all other recognized management options." This means the parks department will take a variety of management steps to address problems, rather than jumping to closures. It also means that when management actions cannot adequately address a problem, the trail will be closed to all users, not just bicyclists or another user group.

The policy also states, "Protection of the environmental asset will take priority over human use...," and the bicycle activists of Calgary are fully prepared to live by that statement. The policy encourages the public to participate in solving problems through education and trail maintenance, and it requires a case by case analysis of issues, rather than blanket approaches applied to every park.

In sum, this may be a model policy suitable for application to urban parklands everywhere.

Much credit for this achievement goes to Ken Kuntz, the city's superintendent of Design and Development for the Parks and Recreation Department, who was the lead official in resolving the issue. Kuntz explained to IMBA Trail News, "Clearly, what we are saying now is we can go designate trails for either all users or no users, but let's not discriminate. If people can be in there, then they can go regardless of transport mode... If speed is a problem for certain nesting birds, then make appropriate restrictions of slow speed, or by time. Those are the kinds of options we have that deal with the concerns, as opposed to banning bikes or any other user."

Calgary Mountain Bike Alliance President Laura-Lee Dyck commented, "It's a beautiful starting point... Initially nobody would talk to us and now they're asking us for advice."

Murray Knight, a leader of CMBA, said, "We maintained that respectable, responsible approach for years and it has paid off. We owe big thanks to the community here." Knight noted that when the issue started, it was called the "off-trail policy. That irked the cyclists. "We don't ride off trail," he insisted. What the city meant was that the use was occuring off of the 250 miles of multi-use, paved trails which grace this young city. The policy was later renamed to apply to "undesignated trails." The new policy gives park users and managers a chance to integrate the paved and unpaved trails into a cohesive system.

Knight observed that much work remains for bicyclists. "We've taken it this far with a handful of volunteers. Now we need all cyclists to do their 20-20-20 work," he said, referring to IMBA's program which encourages riders to join their local club, join IMBA, and put in 20 hours of volunteer work each year, "... and riders must go to their community association meetings for the next couple years," because those neighborhood groups will remain involved in managing nearby parks.

CMBA's achievement derived from a classic campaign. The group was galvanized into action when a popular singletrack was transformed into a gravel road closed to bikes. On the heels of that action, the city began responding to calls for banning bikes from singletracks. CMBA diligently participated in a citizen parks advisory committee and submitted well researched documents refuting allegations made by anti-biking people. Gradually, the group convinced the city of the legitimacy and responsibility of cyclists. Earlier this year, CMBA activists personally visited with the city aldermen (council members) who serve on the official committee governing the parks. Those aldermen then convinced the entire city council to adopt the new policy.

Dyck observed, "At the onset, nobody trusted nobody. By end, it was a little love-in."