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by Steve Bonowski
In June 1997, the federal access board appointed a regulatory negotiating committee (RegNeg) to develop a federal regulation to govern trails accessibility for disabled persons. The Access Board (full name: Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board) was created by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to monitor compliance with federal statutes concerning the disabled. More recently, the board has been responsible for implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.
The RegNeg is composed of trail advocates, primarily from the East Coast area, and advocates for the disabled. It's worth pointing out here that the term "disabled" doesn't include just wheelchair users, but also persons with heart conditions, other mobility problems, the blind, the deaf, and others. The RegNeg's work involves more than a review of trails in urban areas, such as greenways (the Platte River Greenway in metro Denver is an example). Its jurisdiction also includes backcountry trails. Trails in designated federal wilderness areas are exempt from provisions of the ADA and so won't be covered in the committee's work.
The RegNeg held one of its periodic meetings in October 1998, at the Easter Seal Handi-Camp in Empire, Colorado. The committee is presently focusing on general scoping provisions for the regulation and technical provisions for trail construction. Any new regulations will apply only to new trail construction and rebuilt or reconstructed trails, what the committee calls "newly constructed and altered outdoor developed areas."
The scoping provisions will address what percentage of trail construction in a given area must be accessible for the disabled. In an urban area, the percentage is expected to be high. With paved greenway trails, there probably is no reason why a new trail shouldn't be one hundred per cent accessible. The big problem will come with backcountry trails, which is the most primitive type of trail (there are also one or two intermediate trail types between urban and back country trails).
Probably, the percentage of primitive backcountry trails that must be accessible to the disabled will be quite small. However, in the Rocky Mountain region, there is a Forest Service directive that allows wheelchairs to be used in designated wilderness areas. Consequently, if a proposed new trail is in an inaccessible area, the land manager might be required to build a second, accessible trail in the general vicinity. In this time of major budget shortfalls for land managers, such a provision could delay or prevent new trail construction.
Under the proposed regulations, a new trail that enters a designated wilderness area after a couple miles has a problematic status. Does the trail automatically become inaccessible once the wilderness boundary is crossed? Similarly, what happens with new trail construction that starts in a regular backcountry area that subsequently becomes a designated wilderness area under the BLM wilderness bill? Finally, there are concerns that some of the trail advocate members of the RegNeg have insufficient understanding of western public lands and trails issues.
RegNeg additionally is addressing technical matters such as the width of trails; design of campgrounds and fire rings; slope and grade of trails; construction materials; and similar issues.
The RegNeg will meet once more, in January, and plans to publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register for public comment sometime in March. Given the vagaries of the regulatory process, it is possible the rule may not be published on time. The CMC will continue to track this process, and we will provide comments on behalf of members at the appropriate time. Any Colorado Mountain Club member interested in learning more about this issue can contact either Heide Andersen or this writer at the CMC office in Golden.
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