Originally Posted by
john m flores
As a hiker and trail runner, any trail being used by mountain bikes (even before ebikes) is more damaged than a pure hiking trail. Every hiker has a story about getting spooked by a mountain biker; seems like you don't need a motor to be an inconsiderate *******.
This may push the hiking community to try to ban all wheeled vehicles, electric or not, on trails. They won't make the distinction that we are making here, and there's little chance that the human-powered mountain biking community can form an alliance with the hiking community to ban ebikes because the relationship has been so antagonistic for so long.
As a hiker and only casual mountain biker, I tend to agree with you. Bikes and walkers often don't mix well. Most MTBers I meet while hiking are courteous enough, but there are blind corners and fast downhills that can cause problems. "Multi Use" often doesn't work in many situations.
That said, I'm familiar with some trails that were developed - all the hard work done - by a local mtb club and originally intended for MTB use. Public/municipal land was the problem. The decision makers were swayed by the walking community to make them multi use trails, which seriously degraded the MTB use. The point being, I don't think MTBers are any happier with multi use trails than the walkers. But with limited resources for trail development, it needs to work out as best it can.
As another point, I still don't understand why electric motors of any sort are OK on non-motorized trails. Non motorized is non motorized, period.