A Recreational Bottleneck : Pedestrians, Cyclists Vie for Space on Increasingly Crowded Trails

Too many people are doing too many different things in too little space.

That’s the story of the county’s off-street recreational paths, particularly those that meander along the coast.

Pedestrians, joggers, bicyclists, skaters, skateboarders and even a few horseback riders are competing for space on these concrete pathways these days, and users say it is sometimes difficult to keep moving.

“Everybody’s either girl-watching, bird-watching, beach-watching or not watching,” Bill Sellin, an avid cyclist, said of the increasingly crowded coastal trails.

‘You’ve got everything from baby strollers to kids on tricycles going around in circles. You’ve got some people trying to go 30 miles per hour mixed in with kids who’d rather throw rocks at the ducks,” said Sellin, 35, of Orange.

Fearing liability, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach have already posted speed limits along their coastal recreational routes. Both cities would like to separate pedestrians from those on wheels, a combination that has become a recipe for accidents and injuries, but building side-by-side pathways seems too expensive in times of budget cuts.

While these short stretches of beachfront paths are the busiest of the county’s 100 miles of off-street roadways, users say the free-for-all paths extend even to popular inland routes. The latter includes the 27-mile path that runs north from the coast to the county line along the Santa Ana River and the 15-mile stretch that parallels Aliso Creek from Laguna Beach up to Cleveland National Forest.

“I prefer to avoid them,” said Sellin, a founder of the 600-plus-member Bike Club of Irvine, explaining that he would rather ride among the cars. “Generally I’d advise people to stay off (the bike trail) unless they want to enjoy the view.”

In Huntington Beach, from Bolsa Chica State Beach south to Beach Boulevard, wheels may spin no faster than 10 m.p.h., and only 5 m.p.h. when pedestrians are present, which is almost always the case. In the crowded summer months, flashing lights near the Huntington Beach Pier mean only walking is allowed.

Between 33rd and E streets in Newport Beach, the speed limit on the oceanfront sidewalk is 8 m.p.h. for all users, all the time, and near the base of the city’s piers, skaters and cyclists are required to walk. After a spate of expensive personal-injury lawsuits, such as the multimillion-dollar settlement approved last week for a Newport Beach bike crash victim, some have advocated similar restrictions for the Santa Ana River trail or Backbay Drive, which cuts through the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve.

But cyclists say speed limits place an unreasonable burden on path users.

“These speed limits are ridiculous,” complained Dane Clark, president of the Orange County Wheelmen, a 1,000-member club founded in 1964. “You can’t ride a bicycle at 5 m.p.h.--why bother? You can walk that fast.”

Members of the Orange County Bicycle Coalition, which shuns off-road trails and instead focuses on improving conditions for cyclists on highways and multilane streets, said the speed limits are not only “ridiculous,” but dangerous. Cyclists have 2.6 times as many accidents on trails than in traffic, said Michael Mott, president of the bicycle coalition.

“Even little children go eight or 10 miles an hour with no problem,” Mott said. “About three or four miles an hour you have trouble staying up.”

Safety, though, is the motivation behind the speed limits, which are subject to erratic enforcement but can cost violators more than $100 in fines and court fees.

Huntington Beach was the first to post the speed limit signs--in 1986. That happened after the surge in the number of cyclists turned the service road built there in the 1940s for beachfront concessions into a two-wheel danger zone. Residents complained of “spandex terrorists,” and a series of accidents and lawsuits cost the city thousands of dollars.

“It literally became an issue that if you were in the road you were fair game,” Marine Safety Capt. Bill Richardson said. Pedestrians are “like a moving target coming across right in front of you so (bicyclists) have to be cognizant of what’s around here.”

The speed limit has drastically reduced accidents, Richardson said, but ideally there would be separate paths for those on wheels and those afoot.

Similar proposals for separate paths in Newport Beach, where the sidewalk was designated for bicycles in mid-century, have been stymied because of costs. Seeing no other alternative, the City Council imposed the speed limit a year ago after paying a pedestrian who was struck by a cyclist $277,000. Last week, the council banned skateboards from the 12-foot-wide boardwalk.

During the first summer the speed limit was in place, Newport Beach police issued 28 citations: 18 for whizzing bikes, four for speedy skaters, and six for cyclists “operating unsafely”--weaving or otherwise causing problems.

“The city had to do something to get control of the sidewalk,” said Lt. Mike Jackson, traffic services commander. “If the city didn’t do anything we’re wide open for these lawsuits. Now if something does happen, and someone does sue the city, at least we can say we’ve done something.”

Liability concerns have prompted some Newport Beach council members to consider further restrictions, such as a 15 m.p.h. limit on Backbay Drive, mandatory helmet laws, or additional bans on certain “vehicles” from specific areas.

“Today’s world is full of litigation, and we’re subject to lawsuits every time we turn around,” Councilman John C. Cox Jr. said last week, after the council voted to pay $3.1 million to a cyclist who suffered brain damage after an accident on Backbay Drive. “We have to be extremely careful in the way we conduct business today. There has been and will continue to be significant changes in the rules around town--this town and other towns--because of the potential for lawsuits and large costly settlements.”

Ironically, the very popularity of the off-street trails creates obstacles for some intended uses. Bicyclists training for races are simply not compatible with people walking four abreast or joggers concentrating on their headphones.

“As any multi-user trail gets busier, it becomes less and less a bicycle path and becomes a pedestrian path,” said Mott, the OCBC president who commutes by bicycle each day. “The problems between pedestrians and bicyclists is that they have two different rules of the road. A bicyclist tends to go in a straight line and swerve to avoid things; (pedestrians) when they have problems, they tend not to zig or zag, they tend to stop.

The trails are “so popular, we’ve got so many people on them--it’s getting congested and people are getting mad at each other,” he said. “It really says we need more of these trails.”