Don Valley trails, SABOTAGED!

PB Forum :: Trail Building
Don Valley trails, SABOTAGED!
Author Message
flag JokerMachine
Posted: Nov 29, 2010 at 13:16 Quote
Ajax-Rider wrote:
I saw an article about this today in the Toronto Star. Starting to catch some eyes i see

Do they have an online version I can read?
flag zmcycle
O+
Posted: Nov 29, 2010 at 13:17 Quote
http://www.thestar.com/news/transportation/article/898180--cyclists-alarmed-by-bridge-sabotage

Here you go!
flag JokerMachine
Posted: Nov 29, 2010 at 14:22 Quote
I'm a little bit disappointed that human beings find a way to f*ck up someone's hard work and possibly injure or kill people they don't know, no matter what the situation is and no matter how good their life is.

People piss me off.
flag Red6
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 12:48 Quote
Here's another article

Don Valley mountain bikers are growing increasingly worried, and with good reason: someone has been sabotaging their trails, for the apparent purpose of causing serious injury to riders.

The issue began to attract attention both within and outside the mountain biking community last Friday afternoon, when Ted Ingram, a long-time Don Valley biker, sent an email to cyclists warning them of damage to a wooden bridge on a certain Don Valley mountain biking trail.

"If that bridge had failed while you were riding across it, you would not have walked out of there. This was a deliberate act to injure someone," said Ingram. He added that the Don Valley has been popular with mountain bikers for almost thirty years, and that the trails currently have thousands of users.

The nature of the damage to the bridge was subtle. Rather than simply breaking or removing the wooden structure, the culprit used a saw to cut most of the way through its supporting beams, leaving the bridge standing but weakened to the point where it might have given way under the weight of a rider. If that had actually occurred before Ingram noticed the cuts—it didn't—the length of the drop to the ground below for the unlucky cyclist would have been a few feet. For someone riding at high speed, there's no telling what the outcome might have been.

Farther along the trail, a second bridge had some of its wooden rungs ripped off, making it unusable. The damage was obvious enough that cyclists could have spotted and avoided it.

The bridges were built by volunteers involved in the local mountain biking community, and not by the City; the first person to respond to the damage was a member of the Toronto Offroad Bicycling Association (TORBA), who repaired and replaced the cut bridge over the weekend.
There have been other instances of damage to Don Valley mountain biking trails. In 2008, a rider discovered a metal chain stretched across a trail, apparently to act as a kind of roadblock. Last winter, the very same bridges as those tampered with last week were damaged, but in a manner obvious enough for cyclists to steer clear of: one was sawed completely apart, and the other had some slats removed.

The two bridges are far from the only volunteer-built infrastructure along the Don Valley mountain bike trail network. In fact, the vast majority of the Don Valley's mountain biking areas were established informally, by bikers, who continue to maintain them. The only exception is a small length of trail in the Crothers' Woods area of the Valley, where the City, beginning in 2004, has partnered with the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) to lead public trail-building workshops.

Ted Ingram estimates the total length of the trails addressed by the City and IMBA at around four kilometres. "And there's approximately eighty kilometres of trail in the ravine," he said.

The lack of City involvement in mountain bike trail maintenance has been a periodic source of concern. A 2007 report prepared by environmental consultants for the City [PDF] acknowledges that mountain bikers "are the predominant user group of the Don Valley trails," but doesn't go so far as to condone the construction of unnatural trail features. "Unauthorized building of technical trail features (TTFs) and dirt jumps in the forest for mountain biking present management and liability issues for the City of Toronto," says the study. "The presence of these structures and ongoing building of dirt jumps demonstrates the need for a City sanctioned mountain bike skills park in the area." The emergence of anonymous vandals with an apparent interest in destroying these unauthorized structures stands to make matters worse.

Mountain bikers have been trying to maintain some level of formal partnership with the City. "It's something that was completely off the radar for the City until about five years ago," said Alastair Patterson, president of TORBA, which has since its inception roughly five years ago been one of the only organized bodies performing trail maintenance on the parts of the Valley the City hasn't yet involved itself in.

"There isn't really much we can do other than ask people to keep an eye out," he said.

Ingram said that he personally had tried reaching out to the City, but without success: "I tried for years and years, because of my connection with the Don, but it's like banging your head against the wall." Torontoist's calls to the City's department of Parks and Recreation were not immediately returned.

The motivations of the person (or people) responsible for the deliberate trail damage are still unknown. "It's sort of hard to understand why someone is trying to hurt people using those trails," said Patterson.

The City has been notified about the situation by several people, as have Toronto Police. Constable Scott Mills, a TPS social media officer, told Torontoist that "we will take this seriously and look into it." Anyone with information can direct it to the Toronto Police Service's Twitter or call 416-808-2222.
flag guancho-libre
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 12:54 Quote
I know this is a serious issue...But do the cops really have a twitter?
flag zmcycle
O+
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 13:15 Quote
xt-shreder wrote:
I know this is a serious issue...But do the cops really have a twitter?
I guess so, I wonder what there tweets are.....
flag guancho-libre
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 13:22 Quote
Tate27 wrote:
xt-shreder wrote:
I know this is a serious issue...But do the cops really have a twitter?
I guess so, I wonder what there tweets are.....
"Timmies on Street road is out of apple fritters! but they have plenty at the Road street timmies"??
flag vano
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 13:26 Quote
"Just pepper sprayed a minority street person. Good times."
flag JokerMachine
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 13:28 Quote
Tate27 wrote:
xt-shreder wrote:
I know this is a serious issue...But do the cops really have a twitter?
I guess so, I wonder what there tweets are.....

@TorontoJuvenileCorrectionsOffice caught one of your delinquents spraypainting graffiti on a wall AGAIN. Rolled up quietly and then hit the lights and sirens, he totally shit himself LOL"
flag vano
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 13:30 Quote
"go cops, get the dogs, lets go f*ck with old folks,
thats right, lets get high, and pull over black guys.

epic"
flag oldfreerydr
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 14:17 Quote
I noticed some of this last week but was a little shocked when a riding buddy forwarded a link on this from the DMBA. Almost all the bridges on Catalyst/PA were cut up and removed and there are some very odd bits of trail ie. holes in the trail and random pieces of wood. I rode all the bridges that looked to be in good shape but it looks like I was just lucky. Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me. I'm married, have kids, paid very good money to live in a house near the trails and pay lots of taxes. Mountain bikers in the Don create no issues for anyone except dog walkers and hikers. (and any "environmental" arguement is quickly negated and overwhelmed by fact that people living on the edge of the Don use the valley as a garbage can). It would be beneficial to all if there was some civility among Don Valley "users" but I hate say it -I will now look down upon dog walkers and hikers as suspicious-especially if they are carrying anything that can hold a saw.
flag JokerMachine
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 14:26 Quote
oldfreerydr wrote:
Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me. I will now look down upon dog walkers and hikers as suspicious-especially if they are carrying anything that can hold a saw.

Italics - possibly to spread hatred amongst the users of the trail system (see bold), possibly just to be dicks. Human nature is a bitch.

Bold - I doubt dog walkers and hikers did this, but if what happened in Marin County is any indication, I could well be wrong.
flag guancho-libre
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 14:43 Quote
JokerMachine wrote:
oldfreerydr wrote:
Why anyone would want to do this is beyond me. I will now look down upon dog walkers and hikers as suspicious-especially if they are carrying anything that can hold a saw.

Italics - possibly to spread hatred amongst the users of the trail system (see bold), possibly just to be dicks. Human nature is a bitch.

Bold - I doubt dog walkers and hikers did this, but if what happened in Marin County is any indication, I could well be wrong.
QFT.
But I can see dog walkers or hikers being upset by all the bikers riding around all the time. But more the dog walkers than hikers.
flag crs-one
Posted: Nov 30, 2010 at 14:58 Quote
The dog walkers also troop around great packs of dogs, sans permit, and let those f*ckers run around off-leash, which, on a biker-made and maintained trail, is criminally negligent. To say nothing of the shit.

 


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