Runners and Risk

Re “Running the Risk,” Sept. 13.

The Basin Blues Running Club has been running around the Sepulveda Basin for a long, long time. Let me tell you from personal experience that the closed trail along Burbank Boulevard is not much worse right now than it was before the El Nino storms. In fact, in some places it is better.

Runners are not a high-maintenance group. We don’t need or even want a manicured path. The dirt trail is fine as it is right now. Just open the gate; we’ll run around the debris, and the mud has long since dried. The greatest danger does not lie on a uneven path but on the now-overcrowded and narrowed bike path we are forced to share, wheeled and pedestrian users alike.

Golfers are golfing again and bikers are biking again. But walkers and runners are being needlessly penalized and endangered by a bureaucratic squabble over something that really needs little or no fixing.

Just open the gate please.

DUFFY WALTON, President, New Basin Blues Running Club, North Hills