I wish I knew if the CCC board and officers share BrianJ's energy to keep the loops cycle trail? but, I don't know what the leaderships' goals are with respect to trail widths.
I strongly encourage you to contact the Board and express your views so they know. The more communication the Board has with membership, the better informed they will be. I brought the concerns you had to the Board last fall, but there is nothing like hearing directly from the members instead of hearing it through another Board member. We need more of this.
The Board made a motion to support the action of the DNR, as initially described in this thread, which should answer your question. I need to say that I abstained from this vote, as such a position is not in our best long term interest. At the time of the vote, I did not have enough information on the situation. I have since contacted the DNR person who is proposing this and gotten most of the information I didn't have. I would now vote against the proposal as it currently stands.
There's no doubt that most cycle riders prefer "cycle" trail, I am one of them. We, as an organization, need to support such trail. We also need to ensure riding opportunity exists for all of us, for a long, long time.
From the studies done by the State and my own experiences, I believe that more cycles put in more miles on the trails, than ATVs. That includes the understanding that ATVs outsell cycles by 4 to 1 (or 80% of new sales are ATVs). Thus, using this logic, it would be clear that this Director's Order bit will be good for cycles (ie us) and have relatively little harm. Especially when we are more organized and have greater [organized] numbers. On the surface, this makes sense.
There are two problems with locking people out of public land in this situation, however. I'll start with the lesser impact.
The ATV crowd will be very, very upset when they find out the cycle guys are trying to lock them out. Many won't be highly agitated, but they sure ain't gonna work to help us in the future. Their numbers are growing every day. ATVOC already exceeds the membership numbers of most cycle clubs. Heck, they had an informal ride in January at Leota and had over 100 riders show up (no charge, no event, just come ride and have a hot dog deal). SORVA is growing in the UP. They just added another county/chapter (Luce county). They plan to have a chapter in each county with plans to expand beyond that and active members who want to see things happen. It's not _if_ ATV riders will become organized and a political power, it's _when_. We need to work together to be able to have some influence in the future. If we are not partnered with the ATV crowd, they will have the larger voice and we will lose out. This does not mean we lose cycle trail and end up with roads for riding, this means we are proactive and ensure that all ORV riders have similar opportunity for riding. This "proactive" means we work for and with ATV riders to ensure they work for and with us to keep cycle trail available.
More important reason to not support this, the way it currently stands, is the DNR's motivation for it. The State has recently taken up Forest Certification. Although we passed and received certification, there were major issues. One of the biggest issues is illegal ORV use (ORV includes cycles). The DNR has already made statements that ORVs may become illegal on State land due to this issue. Some of the items that fail certification are when braided trail is created, erosion of any sort happens which of course includes mud holes that are wallowed out and whenever ORVs stray off their designated paths. I don't agree with FC and think this is all a crock, but, that won't change what the State is doing.
When Gladwin was closed, it was due to environmental issues. One of their current excuses to keep one of the [now fixed] loops closed is that braided trail will happen - ie more damage and more FC failure. With that loop mostly closed, other trail systems have picked up the burden of the additional traffic. Geels now sees more traffic and is being whooped out faster than before. Even worse are the mudholes that have gotten out of hand on Geels (because of the additional traffic). If we can't get those holes fixed soon, it will become the next trail on our list of "used to have a trail there". More traffic concentrated on fewer trails destroys those trails very quickly.
Evart is one of the trails listed for this "closed to anything with more than 2 wheels" rule. Evart already is fifty percent open to ATVs (as in they fit and ride on it; the trail has never been a 50" trail). By closing it to quads, that traffic will have to go elsewhere and put additional pressure on that other trail. That or the ATVs will still ride the trail or the surrounding area - illegally. That illegal ORV use is still _illegal ORV use_ and will be cited by the DNR as the reason we are failing forest certification and thus, why ORVs will have to be outlawed on State land.
We know that COs will not be sitting at a trail head waiting for ATVs to unload and write tickets. They don't enforce the rules we have now in many problem areas. Hoping that making it illegal for an ATV to ride certain trails will suddenly solve the bigger issue is wishful thinking at best.
Making it illegal for anything other than a two wheeler to use most of the west side trails in the State will force the traffic that would be on them over to other systems, those systems will then suffer and be closed down by the DNR due to "damage". Of course the trails that are designated cycle only will still have (now) illegal ATV traffic on them and also suffer this damage. Remember, just braided trail is enough for the DNR to freak out about. Since even making it illegal for ATVs to ride cycle trails didn't stop the damage the DNR will be left with no choice but to shut those few remaining trails down. Seriously. All Gone.
Even the Dual Sport crowd has been hit with Forest Certification issues. Routes that we've used for _years_ in Atlanta have already been denied this year.
This is not to say that we can't protect or extend single track, because it is possible and important to do. What we need to do is work with the ATV crowd and get joint support for the ORV system - and in doing so put in similar opportunity for most ORVs. This would be done by providing riding options for ATVs near Evart. For example, turn the existing trail into a 50" trail and put a parallel single track in place. Share road crossings, etc. Just like the MCCCT and ORV trail in the Meadows system. Then mark the single track as "cycle only". No Director's Order needed, as there won't be ATVs on the single track when they have riding options just 20' to the right. This has been proven to work in the Meadows system as well as Little Manistee and others. Going this way, we get full support from the ATV crowd, we as ORV enthusiast gain a larger voice overall and we reduce the overall load on many trails.
The DNR has been charged legislatively to put another 25% more trail on the ground. Trail meaning more ORV options and could include Route or Trail. This might net us another 750 miles of ORV something. We should all get together and push the DNR to put this new milage down in ways that will best benefit _all_ of us and in turn the ORV system. If any of us get greedy we will all lose as the DNR will win and evict us when they get the opportunity. Don't think so? Do you remember far enough back to when the forest roads in the lower peninsula were open? How about before the designated trail system when we could ride any trail out there, marked or not? Geez that used to be fun.
Recently, TrailRider made reference to "encouraging some ATV user groups to join the CCC as chapters"
This falls back to the "making friends of ATVs instead of making enemies". If the CCC is to grow it's membership base, ATV riders are left, there is not substantial growth available in cycle riders.
The last survey the CCC took showed that a majority of it's membership had ATVs. A good percentage of ATVOC are also CCC members.
I believe most efforts to bring in ATV membership has failed so far.
GLDS is in preliminary talks with ATVOC to put the August event at Geels on jointly. Our (as in GLDS) motivation for this is not to bring the CCC memberships, but to foster that partnership that I described above.
With this developement does that mean some BOG's want 50" trail and some want 40" cycle trail? Is this in alignment with membership?
The first question is difficult for me to answer. Based on discussions and votes, it's my conclusion that there are some BOG that want to see both trail (including me) and some that may only care about 40" trail. As above, I strongly encourage you to ask them individually. As for the second question, I think our membership was reflected pretty well in this thread (realizing the answers given were generally from those heavily biased towards single track). Few are hard core and only want cycle trail. Most want to ride and don't want to see opportunities taken away from others - at the same time would prefer single track. There are some that think 50" is dang narrow too. I've ridden Dual Sport with guys who were freaked right out on anything narrower than a snowmobile trail (and they are CCC members). Figure that our Trail Tours are only on 50" trail and we consistently pull 250+ riders at these events, if they didn't like 50" trail they would spend their riding time elsewhere.