Colorado Springs parks officials are taking next steps toward a long-awaited decision on electric-powered bikes’ legal fate on city-owned trails.

A decision has been in limbo since 2021, when the city parks department announced allowing e-bikes on all trails where other bikes were allowed in what was to be a year-long review period.

The pilot program was scrapped amid opponents threatening lawsuit. They pointed to the city’s 1997 voter-approved Trails, Open Space and Parks (TOPS) ordinance, which bans motorized vehicles from properties funded by TOPS’ sales tax collections, including Red Rock Canyon, Stratton and Blodgett open spaces, to name a few.

Now officials are launching a survey — part of “a community engagement plan,” as TOPS Manager Lonna Thelen told TOPS committee members during a recent, brief presentation.

The online survey aims to gather broad input following “task force” meetings that brought together decision-makers and advocates on either side of the e-bike debate. That debate has continued around the city’s parks and open spaces while other land managers across the Front Range have decided on varying levels of access for the increasingly popular vehicle.

“I guess I don’t know of any other city that’s been in turmoil about it for this long,” said Cory Sutela, who leads local mountain biking group Medicine Wheel. “But that’s because of our unique tax base and complexities with TOPS, and all the wonderful preservation aspects of TOPS.”

Slated to last this month into early August, the survey could inform a potential question for voters on the April 2025 ballot. Specifics on that potential question are uncertain, but officials have said expanded e-bike access would depend on voters agreeing to change the TOPS ordinance.

No question is certain, Thelen emphasized.

“If the community survey input supports the current prohibitions on motorized use via e-bikes, TOPS would not need to be changed, and e-bikes would continue to be prohibited on TOPS properties,” she said.

From the previous task force meetings and his view around town, Kent Obee has sensed a growing appetite for expanded access. That’s while the longtime parks advocate has stood in opposition.

“I’m aware of this head of steam, I think both from the bicycle community and also the guys who are selling and things like that,” Obee said.

Leading advocacy group Trails and Open Space Coalition has pushed for Class 1 e-bikes on all trails where other bikes are allowed, those being e-bikes that give pedal-assisted boosts up to 20 mph.

“In many of our minds, it’s an equity issue,” said Susan Davies, the coalition’s executive director. “As people age and no longer feel confident taking a mountain bike out to our open spaces, they find a great deal of joy on e-bikes that give them a little extra help.”

But opponents say that thinking ignores e-bikes’ ever changing capabilities and demographics. Said Obee: “It’s just changing the nature of the trail experience.”

Medicine Wheel supports e-bikes on urban, commuter trails — what city policy currently allows — while taking a harder, nuanced look at where they should be allowed across the city’s more rugged terrain. Boulder County grants e-bikes on “plains” trails but not “foothills and mountain trails,” for example, while Jefferson County in 2018 greenlit broad access. Douglas County also allows e-bikes on almost all of its open spaces.

If Colorado Springs voters see a question in April, it might not ask about an exact policy, but instead a change in the TOPS ordinance granting authority to set a policy.

Said Thelen: “A change to the TOPS ordinance would require voter approval but not the e-bike policy as a whole.”

That would make sense to Sutela. “The only successful change is to give staff more authority to make more decisions,” he said. “You can’t future-proof these changes, and it becomes expensive and time-consuming and repetitive to keep coming back” to voters.

Obee, who was hoping a specific policy recommendation came out of task force meetings, wasn’t so sure about more authority. “That would open a Pandora’s box,” he said. “Change it to one thing, presumably you can change it to something else.”

Only with “robust public input and checks and balances,” Sutela said he would hope.

He counted himself “thrilled” for the survey collecting input and more public engagement.

“What we’ve been asking for for six years,” he said, referring to a time before the city’s e-bike pilot attempt. “Let’s get the real information and really have a truly engaged process and make a decision about what we want for our community.”

The survey is set to be posted Friday at coloradosprings.gov/ebike-input