A few years back, Tumbler Ridge stood on the cusp of allowing off-road vehicles (ORVs) that were properly licensed and insured the ability to drive on municipal roadways from a person’s residence to the nearest trailhead, but that has still not happened.
“It doesn’t make sense to have to load my ATV to drive two blocks to unload again,” says Tim Croston, president of the Grizzly Valley ATV club. And, he says, it doesn’t have to be this way.
“ATVBC has been working with rural communities on the North Island to improve the Operation Permit process to better facilitate ORV tourism,” he says. The Operation Permit is a permit issued by the RCMP to allow ORV operators specific access to roads governed under the Highways Act.
According to an Information Sheet on Operation Permits from ICBC: “A member of the RCMP detachment or a constable of a municipal police force may use their discretion: to issue the operation permit; specify limitations and conditions of operation within the permit (for example, time of day, days of week, areas of operation); and specify how long the permit is valid, for a period of up to two years.”
And therein lies the problem. Operation Permits are issued at the discretion of the RCMP, and of the local detachment. This means the interpretation of what an Operation Permit is valid for and can be used for varies from detachment to detachment and from member to member.
But would allowing ORV access to town roads work here?
The local ATV club frequently points to the District of Elkford as a shining example of how this could be done, with permits issued to residents allowing them to travel on designated roads within the community to access trails outside the community, but as of last year, the RCMP stopped issuing the permits only months after they started due to “liability and safety concerns.”
Scott Beeching, Director of Planning and Development Services with the District of Elkford says the RCMP issued a bunch of permits starting last year in April, but stopped a few month later, as the Operations Permits were not the ideal solution. “Operational Permits are really to allow people to cross the road, not to get to trailhead,” he says. “We are looking at finding a better way to do this.”
He says providing plenty of places to access the trails is key. “Giving people a safe spot to access trail helps minimize time that they’re on ICBC road.”
While the program has been reasonably successful, they are working on hammering out a better solution, which they hope to have in place before the tourism season. “In Elkford, 99.9 percent of the users are respectful,” he says. “There’s that point one percent of people that aren’t obeying any rules anyway.”
In 2016, the District of Tumbler Ridge and the Peace River Regional District submitted Resolution B67 which was endorsed by the North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA), to allow local governments to regulate the operation of ORVs within local government boundaries. However, this resolution was not endorsed at UBCM, with the Resolutions Committee noting that “providing a local government with jurisdiction over ORV operation within its boundaries would in effect establish two separate systems for regulating ORVs: provincial and local” and that “the newly implemented province wide system of registration and licensing ensures there are consistent rules in place from one community to another, which makes it easier for ORV riders who wish to travel across communities and regions through BC’s trail system”.
Croston says they were asked to remove the resolution for these reasons, and has asked the District to take the motion forward once again, which they have agreed to do. “Since that time, other local governments have been working within the current provincial ORV legislation and management framework which allows for Operation Permits to be issued for incidental access to public roads to allow rural communities to expand their trail networks to take advantage of economic development opportunities by way of tourism. The legislation already exists to allow Operation Permits to be issued. However the administrative process to obtain these permits is onerous and not conducive to convenient incidental access to trail networks connecting multiple communities. A separate operation permit must be obtained from each jurisdiction.”
Many years ago, he says, there was a snowmobile trail network that connected Dawson Creek to TR. “This trail is currently being worked on again to attempt to reopen this once popular trail and connect the two communities for ORV enjoyment. The Paradise Valley Snowmobile Club has put in for a substantial grant for 2019 and has already allocated $50,000 towards re-establishing this trail. It is my hopes that the Grizzly Valley ATV Club can begin work on the trail from this side if the project continues to proceed. We have already cleared approximately 6 kms of the old trail in 2018 that extended our new Quality Lake Trail to cross the Bearhole Lake road and now terminates up at the Quality Wind Project.”
But, once riders from Tumbler get to Dawson, or vice versa, they are not able to ride into town for food, fuel or shelter. “I would like to add that the Operation Permits process has been working very well on Vancouver Island and there is no reason it could not work here. I would also like to begin the process once again of seeing if we cannot get our local RCMP detachment to issue permits on a case by case scenario that allows residents not living on the green belt to access trails near their homes. This was all previously checked with their lawyers and approved prior to the new sergeant being posted to town. We were instructed that Operation Permits would begin to be issued in June of 2017. This never happened as the new sergeant shelved the entire thing upon his arrival.
However, the response from the local RCMP is the same as before, saying that ATVs and Sleds do not meet the standards required by the motor vehicle act. “Based upon the above,” he writes in a letter to council, “I am still unable to issue permits allowing off-road vehicles to be used on the roadway for the purposes requested.
CAO Jordan Wall says the District is getting mixed messages. “We spoke with the Provincial ORV coordinator. We spoke with her with the RCMP in the room. The ministry is clear, this can happen. It’s a comfort level with the local detachment if someone were to get hurt while using this. We can have this conversation again…but we’ve been around this circle a couple of times.”
Councillor Howe says that it feels like the District is stuck in the middle. “All we want is for people to be able to access the trails from their houses. Everybody is breaking the law right now. The guys who are flying down the road [riding ORVs]? That’s what we’re trying to stop. That’s why we put this all in place and had a route and four way stops. Everything was in place so we could do this safely. According to the ministry it can be done,” he says. “The RCMP is saying you can’t. We’re the ones stuck in the middle.”
