| By Neil Johnson Big Radio and WCLO Radio news |

The city of Milton plans to take a deeper look at whether to turn its city streets into designated ATV-UTV routes, but that won’t come until after the city wraps up its ongoing city administrator search and its fall budget sessions.

Milton’s city council voted unanimously to host a public workshop February 15 that’ll allow police and state department of natural resources officials to share their experiences with a growing number of highway ATV-UTV routes statewide. The session would be aimed at helping residents with questions about the law and public safety issues linked to ATV-UTV ridership on public roadways.

It comes after local ATV-UTV club the Rock County Crawlers is asking the city of Milton and some other local towns to designate routes that would link into a rapidly expanding statewide network of highway routes for four-wheeled recreational vehicles. Rock County this year OK’d a framework for designating county roads as ATV-UTV routes, although towns and municipalities must enact their own policies.

The town of Fulton held a similar ATV-UTV highway route workshop last week, and the town of Harmony is in the midst of designating some UTV-ATV routes on town roads. In all, the state has about 54,000 miles of dedicated road for ATV-UTV ridership, and the number is expected to grow as the recreational sport grows in popularity among both locals an  tourists.

The council held off on setting a date for an ATV-UTV workshop this fall because the city is in now the midst of its annual budget planning, and the council is still knee deep in vetting finalists for Milton’s vacant city administrator position.

City council member Sharla Walker says in her words that ATV-UTV use on the highways is typically “tame” despite public sentiment otherwise. She said she’s spoken with some trail and highway riders who’ve told her most of the machines used on roads can travel at speeds no more than 35 miles per hour.

Bill Wilson, another Milton council member, said he thinks that public concern over people misbehaving on public roads on UTVs or ATVs is “overblown.” Wilson said he’s been researching Whitewater’s recent move to allow ATV-UTV riders on local routes, and he said he has been told officials there haven’t reported any serious public safety problems.

In Wisconsin, traveling on a UTV or ATV with open alcohol, even on county roads, does not count against an ATV-UTV drivers’ regular vehicle drivers license, although state lawmakers have been reviewing the law.