Road Routes: What They Are Good For… And Not Good For…

Aaaa, road routes…

These specially designated routes are usually shared with vehicular traffic and connect one trail segment to the next trail segment or as a means to get you from the trail to a town or business, so that you can purchase fuel at a gas station or food from a local restaurant or back to your campsite. For these reasons, the road route is wonderful… and a must, if a community is to see any economic benefit from the trails and ohvers.

Usually, everyone is respectful of each other, meaning the various types of vehicular traffic on the given road route & as long as there is that respect, for each other, and the laws in place, there never is really any issues.

These road routes are great and do their job getting us from the trails to our destinations.

The problems come in, when trail clubs consider these road routes to be sufficient, meaning they don’t even try to build off-road trails, or they are unable to secure “off-road” right-of-ways in order to build trails, so they settle with basing their entire existence to road routes, making these the trails of their club territory. There are several “Trail Clubs” here in Wisconsin that have “Road Runners” in their club name and logo.

Now, I have harped on this in the past and I will not go into this again here, but I wanted to share these clear differences.

Road Route In West Virginia…

A road route should be considered, not dangerous per’se, but to be used only when absolutely necessary, like when you need to obtain food or fuel.

To just “ride” the roads is not a pleasant experience for me. I always have a feeling of “not belonging” on the road?! I think that is a good feeling to have, because I feel that these machines should not be on the roads, they are off-road machines.

For one they are loud, even when traveling at a relatively low speed of say 35 MPH, they engine is noisy and the tires are roaring due to the knobs on the off-road tire.

Put in this way…

Say I have a home along this road route, I wouldn’t appreciate the constant drone of off-road vehicles driving along this road, consider that these people are out in the middle of no-where because that’s what they like, and the quiet that, that life offers. You see where i’m going with this…

To be clear, I don’t think we should ban road usage, because people travel from their homes using their ohvs via these road routes to get to the trails as well, let’s not forget about that fact. So it is beneficial for local residents to have access to these road routes open to them.

My problem is when non-residents, ride all over creation on these road routes “exploring”. My thinking is it’s un-needed and dangerous depending on traffic volumes and terrain. In other words, if a road is busy, your in danger. If the road route you are driving with your ohv is hilly, a vehicle traveling over that hill, may not see you in time if you are stopped or traveling slowly. This “problem” is more of a situational awareness issue for the ohver but it’s easy to become unaware of your situation, when your in the middle of no-where or lost. I see it a lot.

So the takeaway of this article, is not to close down road routes but to respect these “tools” in our off-roading arsenals. Road Routes should not be considered safe or the destination, they should be respected and avoided if possible.