This Land, Your Land

The Blue Ridge Parkway will continue to accommodate bicycles and other modes of transportation as it maps out a management plan for the next two decades, the park said in a statement released Monday.

Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine suggested in an article December 8 that the draft management plan's statement that the Parkway would be "actively managed as a traditional, self-contained, scenic recreational driving experience" meant bicyclists might eventually be banned from the Parkway.

"There is nothing in the General Management Plan Preferred Alternative that precludes any existing uses from continuing, or precludes the consideration of new uses," the Parkway's statement says. "There are many activities that occur on the Parkway - hiking, horseback riding, motorcycle use, running, bird watching - such uses are allowed where appropriate given resource protection and safety concerns. All uses of the Parkway motor road are currently and will continue to be managed under federal laws and National Park Service policies."

The National Park Service released a draft of the proposed management plan for public comment in October. Comments were due by December 16.

This week's statement also says the Parkway's eligibility for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (an objective of the management plan) is in part due to its serving as an example of rural parkway design. This requires maintenance of "the design and spatial relationship of the travel lanes, grass shoulders, paved ditches, and cut and fill slopes," which is apparently an oblique reference to bicycle lanes and an attempt to cut off consideration of them.

Blue Ridge Outdoors, in a December 12 post, maintains the Parkway's plan is bad for bicyclists. "By placing their management focus exclusively on driving, they can make management decisions such as restricting cyclists during summer months or certain times of day," it says. "They can also close certain sections of the Parkway to cyclists (and runners, hikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts)."