Originally Posted by staehpj1

I have bike toured fairly extensively, having done a couple coast to coat trips and a bunch of other longish tours. I would respond to your comments as follows:

1. Regarding awkwardness of asking private land owners permission... I have never actually needed to do that directly. I have sometimes asked in a general way whether there was somewhere that I could pitch a tent for the night. Sometimes that lead to someone offering a place. Sometimes it resulted in them pointing out a picnic area or park. Sometimes it resulted in a blank stare, but it has never seemed especially awkward to me.
2. I have also had nice folks just offer a place to stay with no prompting on my part, most often in their home, but sometimes camping in their yard.
3. Regarding Liability... I have never had anyone even mention it when I have camped on private or public property or was hosted in someone's home. I have hosted a few cyclists offering a room and dinner and never was concerned about liability and they have always been nice and well behaved. Maybe I have just been lucky, but I think bike tourists are just mostly nice people.
4. During 73 days on the Trans America I camped for free more often than not, never employed stealth, and averaged less that $5 per day for camping or lodging. I was offered places to stay some of the time. Camped in town parks some of the time. Asked around and was pointed to potential places to camp. None of this ever felt awkward at all. My experience on subsequent tours has been similar.
5. Even in private campgrounds (and motels too) I am more often than not given a reduced rate when I ask if there is a cyclists discount.

I find it hard to imagine that anyone who had done a multi week or multi month tour would propose any of this. Since on the road I have found most of the concerns expressed to be complete non issues. That was one of the things that I was pleasantly surprised about when I started touring. It seems to me as if this proposal is a solution looking for a problem. The last thing I want to see is more government involvement.

I will grant that I don't tour in the east other than briefly at the end of a coast to coast tour and that things may be tougher there, but even if there is more of a problem there I doubt that this is the solution.

What I would like to see is the hiker biker site concept extended to more jurisdictions of federal, state, and county forests/parks. It works wonderfully in Oregon and California IMO.