Police to crack down on ATV violations

WASILLA — When the weather heats up, the toys come out.

All-terrain vehicles are causing a ruckus along busy roadways this summer for drivers in Wasilla, where it’s legal to use vehicles like four-wheelers and dirt bikes with working headlights and taillights.

“They can pretty much do whatever they want to do,” Wasilla resident Bob Webber said about ATV riders around the city. He said ATVs stir up so much dust along Knik-Goose Bay Road that it can often make for hazardous visibility and rip up millions of dollars’ worth of roadside landscaping.

Wasilla Police Department Code Compliance Officer Mike Rager agrees ATV riders often damage city property. Rager said the WPD has a problem with minors in the Wonderland Park area destroying new grass once they get their machines inside the skate park’s fence.

ATV users who ride on the shoulder of the road can also unknowingly undermine the city’s asphalt, like on Spruce Avenue and Knik-Goose Bay Road, Rager said.

“This isn’t the sleepy little hamlet you’re putting around to the store like you did 15 years ago,” Rager said. “It’s not a matter of if [an accident] will happen, but when.”

The abuse of ATV regulations may change, as the Alaska State Troopers will ramp up enforcement of ATV riders breaking the rules very soon, AST spokeswoman Beth Ibsen said.

On local roadways that have signs stating operating motorized vehicles is prohibited on paved sidewalks and roads, Ibsen said a patrol cars and motorcycles will team up to run down violators in problem areas.

Cindy Causa, co-owner of C&C Auto Care on Knik-Goose Bay Road, said her business is far enough from the arterial road that it does not have problems with dust and rocks stirred up by ATV riders. Conversely, another problem she has witnessed is kids on ATVs failing to stop or look both ways before crossing the roadways and turn-offs around the city.

“If my husband wouldn’t have seen him and anticipated his movements, he would have run right smack into us,” Causa said of a recent encounter her family had with an ATV rider.

Rager said incidents between cars and off-road-vehicles are not uncommon. A few weeks ago on Nelson Avenue, a motocross bike rider speeding in excess of 30 miles per hour struck a car making a legal left-hand turn into a business and went airborne, incurring minor injuries.

Large plumes of dust on local streets can be a regular occurrence, but Korey Cronquist, owner/manager of Team CC in Wasilla, said there are steps city officials can take to help alleviate the tension between motorists and ATV riders.

“I don’t believe the solution to this problem is that we outlaw [four-wheeling],” Cronquist said. The answer is to set up a separate ATV corridor by the roadway to allow riders to be less of an irritant to pedestrians and drivers, he said.

Cronquist said many folks move to the Mat-Su Valley for the freedom and rural setting the area provides. Anchorage and Palmer have had laws for years against residents operating off-road vehicles within city limits.

Using an ATV as a means of transportation is good for local business, Cronquist said, adding that he would support funding to set up a network of corridor trails through the city. Cronquist said cities much larger than Wasilla in Utah, Minnesota and Michigan have trail systems that facilitate snowmachine and ATVs.

Rager said that idea wouldn’t work because setting up a separate corridor doesn’t guarantee off-road riders will be mindful of the law.

“Responsible adults go out and break traffic laws daily,” Rager said. “How can we expect kids to follow the rules?”

Contact Derek Casanovas at derek.casanovas@frontiers-man.com or 352-2284.