By Wendy Hagenmaier

Town Crier Editorial Intern

The vast majority of cyclists take it easy on trails in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, thanks to a district monitoring program.

The district, which has used radar to clock speeding riders since 1994, shows 75 percent compliance with the trails’ 15 mph limit, a statistic that has remained consistent since the program began. The district’s board of directors received a report on the monitoring program at its Feb. 13 meeting in Los Altos.

According to a district report spanning the period 1995 to 2001, in 1996 rangers cited 23 bicyclists traveling in the 26-30 mph range and seven in the over-30 mph category.

“With a bit of a downhill and a wide, open road, a bicyclist can get up to speed quickly,” said Gordon Baillie, a management analyst with the district.

Although the majority of bicyclists seem to heed the District’s guidelines, Baillie acknowledges that because word of radar monitoring along specific trails spreads quickly among bicyclists, the seventy-five percent assessment may not reflect the overall rate. “We’re doing the best we can, though, to hold people to the 15 mph limit. It’s a safety issue,” Baillie said.

The district initiated its program in the wake of increasing popularity of mountain biking in the Bay Area and the rising number of accidents involving bicyclists, equestrians, and other trail-users. The program was established “to help the growing bicycle community with their safety, to educate folks about just how fast they were really going,” Baillie said.

The district plans to continue its monitoring efforts into the future, Baillie said. “There is always a fair number of new people discovering the preserves,” he said. “It’s a continuous effort.”