[no_wizard]

Do you think part of that accessibility plan is more paved parkways too? My wife has a disability that makes walking on gravel substantially harder than paved road.

Selfishly I'd enjoy parks more if the had paved access roads, parking and parkways. One of the things I like about where I'm living right now is the Recreation district in the city made it a mission to pave parkways and everyone's better off for it.

[StillBored]

I'm sorry about your wife, but I'm going to say that I (and quite a number of other people) are against paving public lands reserved for nature parks. I'm perfectly happy to support her using off road (powered even) bikes, wheelchairs and any other personal mobility technology that is invented or used.

But, parks are suppose to be nature, its widely accepted that what the national parks did in the early 1900's was a huge mistake, paving and placing lodges next to old faithful, the paved path in carsbad caverns (along with the cafeteria), the roads through glacier and nearly all of the other parks. The town in the middle of Yosimite valley. This was done to encourage people to "see the sights" and the results have been a disaster, not only to nature, but to the traffic and general destruction of the "sights to be seen". And IMHO paved paths are just another name for a vehicular road.

So the modern take on nature parks (vs recreational parks like you find in town, which have trails, baseball fields and swimming pools), is that the correct way to build them is to keep the cars on the borders, and build trails to the sights. Ideally single track, and most definitely permeable surface. Although, armoring, and other more natural construction methods tend to be fine as well. Most of the parks constructed since the 1970's (the few that exist) tend to follow this model. Visitors center near the road, along with the RV camping, improved camping sites, etc and the nature is accessed via natural surface trails on foot, bike or horse.