The late approval of guided biking tours in Jasper seems to have put the local shops that applied for a chance to participate in the pilot project in a no-win situation. With only a few weeks of the riding season left, it makes little sense for Freewheel, Vicious and others to fork over considerable amounts in order to obtain insurance for a service that might see very few takers before the snow flies. After all, by the time August is out, the tourist traffic will have slowed to a trickle and without bums on bike seats, it’s hard to justify the expense.

The pilot project for guided tours is intended to be in place for two years, and should the operators decide to forego offering the service in the first year of the trial period, there’s no guarantee that Parks will consider the results of next summer’s tour tests sufficient to include the activity in discussions of appropriate use when the management plan is reviewed in 2008. Without assurances of this nature, the delay in approving the pilot project has led to a situation where Parks is asking local businesses to spend (and most likely lose) a fair amount of money in order to have the chance that the guided tours will be permanently acceptable on the trails around Jasper.

We appreciate the timing issue that Parks faces thanks to the scheduled review of the management plan, which falls a very convenient two years from now. However, if the federal agency is unwilling to countenance an alteration of the duration of the trial, perhaps they should offer to run the pilot project in 2007 and 2008 instead. This would give bike shops and Parks Canada alike two full seasons to evaluate the guided bike tours. Considering August and September to represent an entire season of use would severely shortchange the pilot, preventing a proper evaluation of the impact of the services on the trail system and its users.

What would this require? According to Grant Potter, the environmental assessment was written with 2006 and 2007 as the years specified on the trial. Can the procedure for altering this portion of the assessment be so significant to render it impossible? Unless extreme changes to the trail system or use patterns are expected to take effect in 2008, it’s hard to see where the difficulty would arise. If portions of the EA have to be re-done in order to accommodate the change, the four proponents would have to consider the additional costs involved. They should at least have the choice.