Hello Everyone, 

We wanted to give you an update. We met with the city staff yesterday and received the raw data from the original survey which the trail master plan was based off of. We found a lot of serious concerns with the results. You can read the letter we sent to Mayor Harris, City Council Members and the City Staff - HERE. 

Here are some general concerns from the data we reviewed. 

• There were 600 responses from the survey, 200 of those were from non-residents. 70% of the non-resident responses were from bikers. 
• Out of the resident responses, we found a lot of bias due to not obtaining a fair demographic representation. 78% of the response were from individuals 25-54 years old. The survey did not collect the gender, so we do not know if females were representative fairly in this survey. 
• Even though we know this didn't completely represent the community, it still showed 75% of the people were hikers compared to 48% bikers. This means at minimum, twice as many hiker trails should be available to the community opposed to biking trails. Unfortunately, after reviewing the online interactive map from the city, our team found that only 2 miles of trails were designed for hikers compared to 26 miles of trails were specifically designed for mountain bikers (MTB). The other 60 miles of trails are designated as multi-use trails, but as one city staff member commented, even these trails were designed for bikers, not hikers. 
• Last point: There was a question on the survey that asked if the community felt safe in the canyon. 24% of the responses said they felt completely safe, and 76% of the community said they felt some level of being unsafe in the canyon. Unfortunately the survey didn't ask why they felt unsafe. Feeling unsafe can only come from a few reasons (bikers, trail erosion, wildlife, anything else?). We hope to encourage our city to revisit this survey question on safety. We feel that creating family-friendly, no-bike trails can help with these safety concerns. 

Awareness is growing thanks for everyone here. Please continue to share this petition. 

- Hiker Community of Bountiful Team