Advocacy Alerts

Send an email message in support of these issues in as little as two minutes:

Advocacy:

Paseo Bridge Bike/Ped Access: MoDOT is building a new quarter billion dollar bridge in the heart of Kansas City. It could provide the first safe bicycle/pedestrian crossing of the Missouri River near downtown Kansas City. We've been working on this for years and now it's going to move or die forever in the next month or so.

Advocacy:

Hwy 45 Bike/Ped Access: MoDOT is building a new highway through Parkville, Missouri. Guess what--their plans for accommodating bicycling and walking are inadequate, plus they forgot to include any funding for them.

Advocacy:

Bicycling License Plate: Many other states have 'Share the Road with Bicycles' license plates. Why not Missouri, too? In 1 minute you can show your support.

WHAT CAN YOU DO
If you live (or ride/walk trails) in Kansas, please contact your state representative immediately and let them know that you support trails on public lands in Kansas and oppose HB2583.

The Kansas legislature has an online list of all House members with contact information. You can send an email or make a call in less than two minutes.

Members of the Environment Committee (which will be holding a hearing on the bill Tuesday) are

Environment: Freeborn, Chairperson; Tafanelli, Vice-Chairperson; Compton, Faber, Hayzlett, D. Johnson, Light, Powell, Powers, Schwartz, Sloan. Flora, Ranking Minority Member; Faust-Goudeau, Flaharty, J. Miller, Svaty, Thimesch.

DETAILS:
According to Ken Miner, Kansas State Representative of the International Mountain Bicycling Association, a bill has been introduced in the Kansas House of Representatives that threatens individuals and volunteer organizations that work on trails on public lands in Kansas.

Under the terms of the bill, any adjoining landowner would be able to sue individuals or organizations that put volunteer time into trails on public lands. Many (most?) trails on public lands are at least partly built or maintained by volunteers.

The resulting liability would essentially put a stop to such volunteer trail building in Kansas.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing on Tues, Feb 10th, 2004.

Click on the "Comment" link at the end of this article for more information from Ken, including the full text of the proposed bill.

Related:

AdvocacyAlerts-25 FEB 2004: Oppose Kansas trail bill; could fragment trails across the state

News: Rep. Sutherland's Trails in State Parks bill passes

permanent link to article: "6 FEB 2004: Bill in Kansas legislature threatens trails on public land"
posted by Brent Hugh at 1/06/2004 01:05:00 PM |comment on this article