The Albert County Trail Blazers President Aron Tavender says this would give them more freedom to travel from trails to places like gas stations, businesses and restaurants, “It has always been a want. We already do have some road access in the village of Hillsborough. As the Club President and I am also the Director for Quad NB, I always try to look at the bigger picture, and I would like our club, the Trail Blazers to be the biggest Club in the province. With that, having good road access into getting fuel and meals is a must on most ATVers list, and it would help increase our membership as a Club.”
Currently, there are around 1300 Trail Blazers in the province, but Tavender would like to see that number grow.
Some of the roads they’d like to see more access to include the Findlay area, and Trites Road.
“We have what are called Trail heads, so basically start points where you can get onto the trails. A lot of the residents who are ATV users in Riverview, would just like to leave their home and ride to the trails. This will also generate a lot of people coming from outside of Riverview and throughout the province and Atlantic Canada now that the bubble is going to open. We have a lot of offer in Albert County. One of things that anyone coming from out of town needs access to is the fuel and the food, because trying to haul enough is difficult, especially on an ATV,” Tavender says.
He says giving more road access benefits the ATVers, but it also will be a good thing for or the Town as well, ‘Economically it does very well, for any of the other communities that have done this. It definitely helps small business and with COVID right now and the slogan of keeping it local, buy local, shop local, this all contributes to that. Especially if we are able to bring in tourists from other parts of the province. They’re going to spend their money with us.”
Town Council voted on Monday night and has agreed to do more research on the issue, “The Town of Riverview is having its own staff do research by contacting other municipalities that have already done this and getting some feedback from them, to see if they have had any issues. If the town comes back, to let us know they’ll go forward with this, then there will be more meetings to set up by-laws and designate what the routes will be. We have proposed some routes, but they may not be what is best for the Town. There’s still a bit of work to be done, but we’ve got a good start, so fingers crossed,” Tavender says.
