The prospect of adding bicycles to the PCT community raises legitimate issues on a variety of fronts. Thankfully, decades of non-motorized, multiuse trails management has also equipped trail users and land managers with many effective strategies and solutions.

Concerns over sharing the trail with bicycles generally fall into three categories:

1) Trail/Environmental Impacts — How would adding cyclists to the community physically impact the trail itself and the surrounding environment? What changes in trail design, maintenance or management might be needed?

2) Safety — How would adding cyclists impact the safety of all trail users? What can be done to mitigate such concerns?

3) Social/Experiential — How would adding cyclists affect the experience of all trail users? How will we get along with shared use?

All of these questions are important. While this is not the forum for discussing these issues in detail, we would suggest that you approach them in a thoughtful manner that will advance everyone’s understanding and interest in finding solutions to help preserve and enjoy one of our most precious public resources.

We should all put the trail first in anything we do.