Northwest Branch Trail. Photo by rllayman.

We don’t close main arterial streets at night even if a road is less safe. So why do many local governments close walking paths and bicycle trails, even ones that are used as commuting routes?

Reader Bianchi wrote in with a report:

My S.O. and I bought a house in Historic Hyattsville this fall. He uses the Northwest Branch bike trail to get to either West Hyattsville metro or Fort Totten. Last night, on his way home between 6 and 6:30 pm (when it was already dark), a PG County cop car came up behind him while he was on the bike trail and pulled him over.

The officer told him the trail was closed when dark because there had been some reports of mugging. S.O. asked the officer (rhetorically) if he thought riding on the street with cars with no bike lane was really safer.

He feels the question of which route is safer to bike should be left to him, the biker. The ‘no use at dark’ prohibition affects the morning commute too. I guess one solution to street (or bike trail) crime is to just prohibit people from being on the street.

Bianchi contacted Hyattsville Mayor Bill Gardner. Here was his response:

Almost all of the parks and the trails in the County are owned and managed by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC). The Commission’s policy is that park facilities close at dark, period. It has been a struggle to get them to change, although apparently they did re-designate a trail in Montgomery Co. near a Metro as a commuter route a couple years ago and it is open after dark.

We have met with them to request they change the policy, given that the trails in our area are commuting routes. After a bit of work and some publicity, M-NCPPC provided lighting and cameras along a couple short sections of the trail near the metro station. They didn’t agree to “open” the trails after dark in other areas. The trails are policed primarily by the M-NCPPC police, but they do collaborate with the county and city police.

All park facilities? M-NCPPC doesn’t close the roads that go through their parks, like all the roads crossing the portion of Rock Creek in Montgomery County. NPS doesn’t close the GW Parkway. The difference is that park agencies see those as commuter transportation facilities

Leaving aside the question of whether it’s right to have commuter transportation facilities a major part of a parks agency’s mission, a bike and walking trail is a transportation facility as well. Just because people use it for recreation doesn’t make it not a transportation facility; many people jog on streets, too.

Commenter Woodley Parker wrote about the Klingle trail, “I live right above the proposed trail and I would prefer that it not be lit at night. In fact, the trail should probably be closed at night just like many other parks.”

I disagree. It shouldn’t be closed any more than Beach Drive is closed, or Porter or Tilden Streets (none of which is closed). Klingle Valley isn’t going to have a vehicular road, but it’s still going to be a pedestrian and bicycle through route. As such, it should have lights (though they could be much smaller than the lights on a roadway) and be open at all times. So should the trails in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties that serve a transportation function as well as a recreational one.