Travel Management Rule Basics

 The current administration is proposing to change how motorized use is managed on roads and trails in national forests.

The U.S. Forest Service is considering significant changes to the rules governing motorized travel across nearly 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands. These rules matter to runners because they help determine not just whether we can reach public lands, but what we find when we get there: whether a backcountry trail remains quiet singletrack, whether an old logging road is closed and eventually converted to trail, whether vehicles can travel off designated routes, and how conflicts between motorized vehicles and runners and other trail users are managed.

The Travel Management Rule (TMR), adopted in 2005, established the basic framework the Forest Service uses to determine where cars, trucks, dirt bikes, ATVs, and other motor vehicles can travel. On August 24, 2026, the Forest Service announced plans to substantially revise that framework. Among other changes, the agency is considering a new presumption favoring access to existing roads and trails, eliminating national requirements to minimize certain impacts from motorized recreation, regularly reopening closed routes, expanding some forms of off-route motorized travel, changing how Class 1 e-bikes are managed, and replacing the current “minimum road system” standard.

These changes would not suddenly open every closed trail to motor vehicles. Existing motorized-use designations generally remain in place unless changed later. But the proposed rule could substantially change the standards governing future decisions across the National Forest System. For runners, those standards matter.

How Does the Current Rule Work?

Before the current TMR, motorized recreation on many federal lands was effectively managed under an “open unless closed” approach. As off-highway vehicle use expanded, so did unauthorized routes, resource damage, and conflicts among recreation uses.

The 2005 rule established a more deliberate system. National forests generally designate the specific roads, trails, and areas where particular classes of motor vehicles may travel. Motorized travel inconsistent with those designations is generally prohibited.

Think of travel management as the rules of the road for a national forest. Maps and route designations tell people where vehicles belong and where they don’t. That provides predictability for everyone using the landscape—including a runner heading out for a long day on the trail. Importantly, the existing rule requires Forest Service managers to make motorized trail and area designations with the objective of minimizing:

• damage to soils, watersheds, vegetation, and other resources;
• harassment of wildlife and disruption of habitat;
• conflicts between motor vehicles and other recreational uses; and
• conflicts among different classes of motor vehicles.

The requirement to minimize recreation conflicts is particularly important for runners. It gives the Forest Service a substantive responsibility to consider what motorized use will mean for people already using a trail or landscape for running and other forms of recreation.

What Could Change?

A New Presumption Favoring Access

The Forest Service is considering a national presumption that existing roads, trails, trailheads, and other access points should be open to appropriate public use unless restrictions are justified by law, resource conditions, safety, user conflicts, or management capacity.

The concern is that this could shift the starting point for future decisions in favor of additional motorized use. Many national forest trails are already fully accessible for running and other recreation even though they are closed to motor vehicles. A nonmotorized trail is not a closed trail; it is a trail with a particular set of uses and a particular recreation setting.

For runners, that distinction matters. Opening a quiet mountain trail to motorcycles would not simply “increase access.” It could change trail conditions, noise, safety, wildlife impacts, and the character of the experience. The Forest Service should evaluate whether new motorized use is appropriate without treating motorized access as the default measure of public access.

A runner on a nonmotorized trail already has access.

Consider a narrow mountain trail that connects two sections of a long-distance running route. Opening that trail to motorcycles does not simply “provide access.” It changes an existing recreation setting. The runner may now encounter motorcycles around blind corners, breathe dust kicked up by vehicles, encounter widening where vehicles leave the trail tread, and experience a very different backcountry run.

Travel management should recognize those existing running experiences as something worth protecting—not simply as an obstacle to opening additional routes.

Eliminating the Minimization Requirements

Potentially the most consequential change is eliminating the national requirements to minimize damage to resources, impacts to wildlife, and conflicts between motor vehicles and other recreation. There is an important difference between studying an impact and having an obligation to minimize it.

An environmental analysis might acknowledge that opening a trail to motorized vehicles will increase noise, create conflicts with runners, or damage portions of the trail. The current TMR goes further by directing managers to make designation decisions with the objective of minimizing those impacts. That safeguard matters on the kinds of places runners regularly use: narrow singletrack, alpine trails, steep switchbacks, heavily used trail networks, long-distance routes, and race courses.

The Forest Service can modernize travel management without eliminating this basic protection.

Reopening Closed Routes

The Forest Service is considering requiring national forests to regularly identify closed or highly restricted roads and trails that might warrant reopening. But there is another side to that equation. A motorized route that made sense 15 years ago may now have severe erosion, inadequate maintenance, substantially increased recreation use, or new conflicts with a popular running trail.

If the Forest Service regularly asks “Should we reopen this route?”, it should also be asking “Is this existing route still sustainable?” Travel management should respond to changing conditions in both directions.

What Counts as an “Existing” Route?

The Forest Service is considering whether aerial photographs and other public information can help establish whether a road or trail currently exists or existed historically. National forests are filled with old logging roads, abandoned mining tracks, two-tracks, and unauthorized routes. Many runners encounter them regularly.

Historical information can be useful, but an old line across the landscape should not automatically become a candidate for renewed motorized access simply because it can be seen in an aerial photograph. This matters especially when paired with a new presumption favoring access. An abandoned logging road that has been naturally recovering—or has become part of a quiet running landscape—should not effectively start with a presumption that vehicles belong there.

More Off-Route Motorized Travel

The Forest Service is also considering allowing limited off-route motorized travel for activities including dispersed camping, retrieving downed big game, and collecting firewood. The problem is familiar to anyone who spends enough time on trails: tracks attract more tracks.

One vehicle drives off a designated road to a dispersed campsite. Others follow the tire tracks. Vegetation disappears, the route becomes more obvious, and eventually a temporary track can begin functioning like an unofficial road. Those routes can fragment habitat, increase erosion, create new stream crossings, and expand the footprint of vehicle use well beyond the designated road system.

Any off-route exemptions need clear limits that prevent temporary vehicle travel from becoming permanent unauthorized routes.

Class 1 E-Bikes

The Forest Service is considering allowing Class 1 e-bikes on National Forest System trails already open to conventional bicycles without requiring a separate motorized-use designation.

The important question for runners is where and under what conditions that use makes sense. 

A broad, durable trail near a developed recreation area presents very different issues than narrow singletrack climbing through steep terrain, a crowded trail near a community, or a remote backcountry trail where runners and hikers currently make up most of the use. Trail width, sight lines, grades, congestion, existing uses, wildlife concerns, and the character of the trail should all matter.

The Forest Service should continue making trail-specific decisions rather than automatically assuming every trail open to conventional bicycles should also be open to e-bikes.

A severely damaged road in the Los Padres National Forest, California. Photo by Bryant Baker

An Enormous Road System the Forest Service Already Struggles to Maintain

The proposal to replace the current “minimum road system” requirement deserves close scrutiny because the Forest Service already manages a road network far larger than it can fully maintain. Forest Service data estimates roughly $9 billion in deferred maintenance across the National Forest road and bridge system, and lower-standard Maintenance Level 1 and 2 roads make up about 82% of the system, even though the Forest Service’s commonly cited deferred -maintenance figures have focused largely on the higher-standard roads open to passenger vehicles.

That raises a basic question: if the agency is already carrying billions of dollars in deferred maintenance, should federal policy encourage reopening or retaining more roads without first addressing whether those roads are actually needed and can be sustainably maintained?

Before creating incentives to reopen more roads, how will the Forest Service maintain the roads it already has?

Poorly maintained forest roads can fail at culverts, funnel sediment into streams, damage watersheds, fragment wildlife habitat, and consume scarce agency funding that could otherwise support trails and recreation infrastructure.

For runners, this is not abstract infrastructure policy. Forest Service budgets are finite. Dollars spent maintaining unnecessary roads are dollars unavailable for trail maintenance, trailheads, bridges, signage, restoration, and other recreation needs. The revised TMR should continue requiring the Forest Service to identify roads that are actually necessary, realistically assess its ability to maintain them, and decommission or convert unnecessary roads where appropriate.

In some places, an unneeded forest road may provide a much greater public benefit as a trail.

Why This Matters to Runners

Trail running depends on more than mileage. What draws runners to national forest lands is often the character of the experience itself: climbing quiet forested singletrack beside a creek, moving through alpine terrain far from roads, linking remote trails across an entire day, or heading out before work on a familiar local loop. The same is true for organized races, from 50Ks to 100-milers, where the setting, trail conditions, and sense of moving through wild landscapes are central to the experience.

Travel management decisions help shape all of those places. They influence whether a trail remains quiet and narrow, whether runners encounter more vehicle traffic, dust, noise, or erosion, and whether long-distance routes continue to feel remote and intact. For runners, the issue is not simply whether a trail remains open. It is whether the qualities that make that trail worth running are preserved.

Travel management also matters directly to trail races. National forest races often depend on predictable trail conditions, road crossings, trailheads, aid station locations, and emergency access. Changes in vehicle use along a race course can create new safety and management challenges for race directors and Forest Service permit administrators alike.

The goal should be a durable transportation and trail network that protects the places people actually come to experience.

What We’re Asking the Forest Service to Do

• Keep the national minimization safeguards protecting soils, watersheds, wildlife, and runners and other recreation users from avoidable motorized-use conflicts.
• Protect existing running experiences. A trail that already provides outstanding nonmotorized recreation should not be treated as unused simply because it is closed to vehicles.
• Preserve meaningful public participation before opening trails or changing authorized vehicle uses.
• Keep abandoned and unauthorized routes from becoming motorized routes by default. Historical evidence that a route once existed should not itself create a presumption favoring renewed vehicle use.
• Evaluate travel management in both directions. If closed routes are reviewed for reopening, existing routes should also be reviewed when they become unsustainable or create significant impacts.
• Evaluate e-bike use trail by trail, considering trail design, existing use, safety, and recreation setting.
• Put strong guardrails around off-route motorized travel so temporary tracks do not become permanent unauthorized routes.
• Maintain a sustainable road system. With billions of dollars in existing deferred road maintenance, the Forest Service should prioritize the roads it can actually maintain rather than create incentives to expand an already enormous system.
• Invest in trails. Trail maintenance, new connections, trailheads, road-to-trail conversions, bridges, signage, and accurate recreation maps are all meaningful ways to improve access for runners.