ATV hearing Thursday in Somerset
Creating an interconnected trail for ATV buggies in Somerset County will be the topic of a public meeting Thursday Aug. 13 in Somerset. Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. will conduct the meeting, which is set for 6 p.m. at the Somerset Event Center, 1012 South Edgewood Avenue. Led by Somerset County Commissioner Brian Fochtman, the…
Creating an interconnected trail for ATV buggies in Somerset County will be the topic of a public meeting Thursday Aug. 13 in Somerset.
Civil & Environmental Consultants Inc. will conduct the meeting, which is set for 6 p.m. at the Somerset Event Center, 1012 South Edgewood Avenue. Led by Somerset County Commissioner Brian Fochtman, the commissioners hired the consultants for $80,300 in February to study the possibility of creating a countrywide trail for all-terrain and side-by-side vehicles.
The funds came from a state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources grant.
The goal is to connect existing ATV-friendly communities, particularly between the Maryland state line and the northern Cambria County border, using a mix of municipal, state and possibly private roads. But Fochtman said recently the focus of the study had shifted to a potential Summit Township hub for a 15-mile loop, which would include Larimer, Elk Lick and Greenville townships and the boroughs of Meyersdale and Salisbury.
Of those municipalities, only Salisbury, population around 700, prohibits ATV use on public streets.
Elsewhere in the county, Indian Lake and Windber boroughs also permit shared use of public roads with ATVs, but Confluence Borough has not yet amended its ordinances to allow shared use.
Boosting tourism is a big reason behind development of the system, Fochtman said. The trails along with expanded use of ATVs could generate an additional $30 million for the county in tourism dollars based on revenue generated from similar ventures in Potter County and West Virginia, Fochtman said.
Visitors to southern West Virginia’s Hatfield-McCoy Trails, which is among the biggest off-road trail systems in the U.S., covering over 1 million acres of public/private lands, generated an estimated $38 million and supported 450 jobs in 2019, according to a Marshall University study.
Somerset County tourism, an economic driver in the region, generates between $500 million and $700 million annually.
Somerset County Commissioners chose Pittsburgh area-based Civil & Environmental Consultants partly because of its experience developing the trail infrastructure and technical planning for West Virginia’s Hatfield-McCoy Trails. The trail system, which is more than 1,200 miles long and comprising 13 trail systems in nine counties, is overwhelmingly off-road, with some sections essentially unpaved mountain trails.