Courtesy Needs a Little Exercising Too : * With More People on the Fitness Trail, Consideration for Others Is More Important

Orange County’s growing congestion isn’t limited to its freeways, streets, malls and residential neighborhoods. The county’s metamorphosis from a sleepy suburb that served as a bedroom community to Los Angeles to a major urban area is complete. And with that development have come changed conditions that are causing adjustment problems for some people more used to those good old days.

For instance, the great big outdoors isn’t quite as big anymore. Case in point: the popular Santa Ana River trail that runs 26 miles from Anaheim Hills to the ocean at Huntington Beach, through some of the county’s most congested communities.

It used to be that you could get on your old three-speed bike and go for a relaxed ride along the river. Or pull on a pair of running shoes and leisurely hit the trail, sometimes with good old Spot, who needed his exercise too.

Well, things along the river aren’t so relaxed and leisurely anymore. On any given day, bike riders, runners, walkers, skaters, bird watchers, and yes, even horseback riders and their horses, of course, are competing for space on the trail’s narrow paved path and shoulders. It’s worse on weekends.

County park officials estimate that no fewer than 500,000 people use the Santa Ana River trail each year. With that many people chasing recreation and fitness, the potential for accidents and injuries grows.

Bicyclists have been complaining about the increase of pedestrians on the trail, and about the lack of awareness some runners and walkers display by wandering into the bike path in the way of riders, walking several abreast and blocking the roadway or being buttoned up in their headphones, oblivious to the dangers around them and unable to hear shouted warnings. The pedestrians complain too about bikes whizzing dangerously close to them at 35 m.p.h.

Everyone agrees that more warning signs on the rules of the road are needed on the trail. The county should be sure that they are posted.

What’s also needed are more awareness, more consideration and more courtesy as we learn to share our crowded space.

The adjustment will be worth it, especially on the river trail when that cooling sea breeze hits you in the face and you see some ducks waddling along down in the river bed. With all the competition for recreation space, they too are probably grousing about how many more people they see up on the bank.