Glenwood Springs Cyclist Demands E-bike Police for Rio Grande Trail Chaos

Glenwood Springs —“A huge wolf den where people are being raised without mothers teaching them manners or consideration for others.”

That’s Don Cadden’s verdict on the Rio Grande Trail, and after reading his litany of trail chaos, it’s hard to argue with the sentiment. The Glenwood Springs cyclist has logged over 60,000 miles in four decades. He knows the difference between a bike and a liability.

Cadden wrote to the Post Independent to highlight a simple truth: the problem isn’t the e-bike technology. It’s the riders. He’s watching cyclists stare at phones, ride with one hand on the bar, and stop dead in the middle of the lane. He’s seen a young girl swerving wide open on an e-bike and a woman lying flat on her back in the traffic lane, scrolling.

“We need law enforcement on e-bikes patrolling it on a regular basis,” Cadden wrote.

He’s right. The trail is a heavily used public roadway. When you’re moving at 25 to 30 mph on an electric motor, you don’t hear yourself coming. You don’t see the walker until you hit them. Cadden notes that numerous people pass him and his wife without a single warning. It’s not a design flaw. It’s a behavioral one.

Meanwhile, the county is trying to figure out how to house the very people who are clogging the trails.

Garfield County just wiped the slate clean. They reverted decades of development proposals back to original rural zoning. The logic? The old zoning map was drawn when the land was empty and the future was a blank page. Now, the page is full.

“The Garfield County government just made a very important decision by wiping clean decades of development proposals back to the original rural zoning,” a contributor to the Post Independent noted.

The writer points out that the county has seen an “onslaught” of development proposals that don’t make sense anymore. The variables have changed. Climate change is here. Drought is real. Tens of thousands of commuters are now crossing the county every day. The cost of living has outpaced common wages.

Take the Harvest Living development proposal. Decades ago, it might have been a no-brainer. Today, it’s a headache. The infrastructure can’t handle the load, and the budget can’t handle the cost.

“We need law enforcement on e-bikes patrolling it on a regular basis.”

That quote from Cadden isn’t just about trail etiquette. It’s a demand for order in a place that’s growing faster than its rules can keep up. The trail is a shared space, but it’s being treated like a private playground. When you ride without hands, you’re not just risking your own neck. You’re risking the kid on the tricycle behind you.

The zoning reset is a bigger correction. It’s an admission that the county built for a population that didn’t exist yet, and now it has to pay the bill. The Harvest Living example shows that what looked good on paper in 1990 looks like a disaster in 2024.

The bottom line? You can’t have functional trails if riders act like they’re in a vacuum. And you can’t have functional housing if you keep building for a past that never happened. The county is resetting the zoning. The trail users need to reset their manners.

Cadden wants deputies on e-bikes. The county wants to stop building things that don’t fit. Both are asking for control in a system that’s currently running on chaos.