No matter Jon, you simply can't punish the rest of us for what bad actors do. If a highway sees an increase in drunk drivers, should the authorities close the road? These roads have been our solace and recreation for many years, nothing excuses closing them. Fix the other problem; those that abuse them. I have used all those roads in that area for years surveying plants. The little plastic signs are an obnoxious affront to a freedom now removed.
A highway is intended for high volume traffic Bob. If cars were driving off the Garden State Parkway into the forest the drivers would be ticketed. If people are drunk they get ticketed. I am 69 years old and hike into the Batsto all the time. With a pretty heavy backpack and often hip boots or chest waders.
If I were disabled I would obviously not be able to walk along, and into, the Batsto River anyway. Maybe we should provide wheelchair access to the river, and asphalt the roads all the way to the river, and post historic markers. I not trying to be absurd or disrespectful. That happened at an athletic field where I've been running over 24 years, the state asphalted a near mile long cinder stone track because the township was sued for wheelchair access. In the 15 years since it was asphalted I've seen one wheelchair, but now I have to run on asphalt instead of dirt and stone.
The highway is easy to patrol, because that is where the cars and cops are. The forest is very difficult to patrol (but it still should be). The highway is easy to maintain because it is asphalt. The forest is obviously nearly impossible to maintain, but nobody has suggested we will not be able to drive on most of the roads. The rationalization that "people have been driving anywhere they want in the forest for two hundred years" makes no sense because the first hundred years they were using horses or wagons. And there just weren't that many people to drive into Wharton.
Now there are caravans and "jamborees" mudding and spinning tires and tearing up not just the roads but going into wetlands and off the roads.
America is the land of the free, which means people are free to be total idiots and assholes and throw common sense to the wind instead of respecting the environment.
I am assuming that if you were hiking into the Batsto, a few minutes extra did not deter you from going there. I admit that it would a lot more convenient to drive partway into deep run, or drive up the road to the Skit instead of hiking in from the marker, but people have torn up areas back there so I hike in the dark if I want to go there badly enough.
