In the wake of Sundays tragic ATV accident, there have been a lot of questions about where you can and cant ride ATVs on roads. Heres the answer: • O&W Road between Verdun Road and its terminus at North White Oak Creek in the Big South Fork. • Any street inside the Town of Huntsville (except U.S. 27 or S.R. 63). Those are the ONLY public roads in Scott County legal for ATVs. The O&W was, I believe, the result of a private act by the state legislature several years ago. The Town of Huntsville adopted an ordinance in 2007 legalizing ATV traffic on all city streets. That legality of that ordinance was disputed, but never formally challenged. Last month, the State of Tennessee approved the towns request for the entire town to be labeled an adventure tourism district. The state statute, authored by state Sen. Ken Yager, allows streets within adventure tourism districts to be authorized for ATV use. State law also provides for ATVs to cross highways at 90-degree crossings where properly marked. The town is or will soon be placing signs authorizing several such crossings — Huntsville Hill Road and the Courthouse Mall across S.R. 63, Old Jamestown Road across S.R. 63, National Drive across S.R. 63, Glass House Road across U.S. 27, and U.S. 27 and Helenwood Main Street. While the Town of Huntsville is now an adventure tourism district, Scott County also applied for and received adventure tourism status for properties from Brimstone Road in the west to Norma Road in the east, basically the areas neighboring Brimstone Recreation and North Cumberland WMA. Any roads within that area — ironically, including Low Gap Road — can be designated for ATVs. That designation has to come from County Commission, by a two-thirds majority vote. I sat on the Adventure Tourism Committee, and hope that County Commission will consider some of the roads that are necessary to access major ATV areas. Although there is more or less a gentlemens agreement between law enforcement and ATV riders now that riders are allowed on certain parts of certain roads (like River Road and Brimstone), the commissions action to formalize that would definitely make things much simpler for everyone involved.** One major stipulation, as former mayor Jeff Tibbals pointed out to me yesterday, is that legal ATV travel on any road the city/county designates can only occur during daylight hours, which is defined by the state as being 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset. So nighttime riding of ATVs on public roads would still be illegal. So thats the skinny on where you can and cant ride ATVs on public streets. (**As an addendum to the Adventure Tourism statement — I think I can speak for most of the committee members when I say that applying for an adventure tourism district was not solely about legalizing ATV traffic on roadways. First and foremost it was about helping to promote tourism opportunities, and providing a vehicle through which tourism-based businesses can potentially qualify for tax breaks in the future to encourage economic growth. While the adventure tourism committee is currently in limbo -- itll be Mayor Dale Perdues discretion on what to do with it -- there were plans to apply for new adventure tourism districts in 2015 that have nothing to do with ATV riding. Just felt that needed to be clarified.)
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:41:15 +0000
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