Trails in the News - Press Clipping Files

05/20/2007

Wheelway Needs Better Maintenance

Little Traverse Wheelway deserves regional authority for maintenance

Petoskey News Review Editorial

We appreciate the hard work volunteers have applied to the non-motorized path known as the Little Traverse Wheelway, but feel the time has come for them to take a rest.

They should not be saddled with the duty of using their own lawnmowers and gas and time to keep the Wheelway up to snuff. It’s not right and it’s not an effective long-term plan to keep the trail safe and in good shape.

And shame on those governmental units which agreed to maintain parts of the trail when they took the money to build one, but which have done a less than satisfactory job honoring that commitment.

Whether it be because of budget constraints or different priorities, parts of the path look like they’ve rarely been mowed. One example of this is a section Emmet County is supposed to maintain in the area surrounding the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Airport and south to the L’Arbre Croche area.

The county board of commissioners is depending on Emmet County Road Commission incidental mowing when the road agency works on M-119 right of way. There is no agreement with the road agency to mow and if any does occur, just one side of the path gets cut.

The only mowing on the opposite side of the trail is that done by the good graces of private property owner.

This is the county’s maintenance strategy? The county occasionally sweeps the sand off its section of the Wheelway, but brush trimming and edging is not apparent to us.

While some private property owners do maintain the trails on their own, and beautifully, not all do. Of course, landowners never agreed to that, didn’t sign up for it and represent a potential liability question for taxpayers, anyway.

Nor should the trail maintenance be left up to service clubs. Their help and work is invaluable, but should the taxpayers who spent millions and millions of dollars on the trail put such a burden on these clubs?

No, we should not.

This trail extends from Charlevoix to the M-119 intersection and there are concrete plans to go all the way to Harbor Springs. There are 25 miles of what is essentially road with no central authority to maintain those miles — from fixing pavement heaves, clearing overgrowing weeds, sand, downed limbs, dead critters, etc.

The Wheelway needs and deserves a multi-governmental authority charged specifically with these duties, and funded by the governmental bodies which asked for grants and accepted the responsibilities in the first place and by those through which the paths runs, including townships. Maintenance funding responsibility must also include the owner of much of the land and right of way — the state of Michigan

We have a responsibility as taxpayers to maintain this path adequately (the city of Petoskey’s portion is a shining example of how it ought to be done ) and our governments need to recognize that right now, not later.

We call on the affected and interested parties to get together and establish a regional authority like that used for the Paint Creek Trail in Oakland County, an example of effective coordination in trail maintenance and upkeep.

This trail passes through Rochester, Rochester Hills and Orion and Oakland townships. Each of these communities has delegates serving on the Paint Creek Trail Commission. Using equal contributions from all four participating governments, this body handles operating needs such as staffing and patrols along the limestone-surfaced path. The commission also determines maintenance needs for the trail, with each community funding the upkeep based on their respective trail mileage.

A lot of people have worked tirelessly, some for more than 20 years, to see this dream trail come true. Taxpayers in the form of federal, state and local grants and contributions have a lot of money — millions of dollars in land and infrastructure — invested in this system.

We will lose this gem to complacency if we don’t act. We’ve called this trail a Northern Michigan jewel. We are tired of it being allowed to chip and dull. It’s gone on long enough!

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