From the Task Force website:
"The various government agencies (i.e. USFS, BLM, WA DNR, WDFW) that may be involved with road closures or decommissioning apparently use a broad range of criteria and motivations to close and/or decommission roads such as eliminating environmental degradation, reduce impacts associated with motorized access, meet specific management requirements defined in Forest plans or court orders, and avoid long-term road maintenance costs to name a few. Political and legal pressures from various organizations will obviously be a part of the decision process as well.
Depending on the circumstances, road decommissioning may be passive (nature does its thing) to active (mechanical – full obliteration, recontouring, and a variety of other actions. People may tend to refer to their personal experiences of coming across a decommissioned road that once provided access to an area as a significant part of forming their opinions of road decommissioning. In cases of full obliteration the access will likely be limited to traversing the terrain cross-country off of the original road path because the original path may be torn up, have boulders and tree debris/cut tree trunks covering the path, and whatever other methods are used to remove the original road from the landscape. Although access may not be totally cut off, it certainly limits access to people that are able and willing to traverse the terrain off of the original road path; others no longer will have access.
According to this paper (“National Forest Service Road Decommissioning - An attempt to read through the numbers - 2003”
http://wildlandscpr.org/files/FSDecom.pdf ) “Nation-wide, the Forest Service is decommissioning an average of 2,038 miles of road per year (system and non-system roads combined) at a cost of $3,911 per mile.” “Region 6 [Oregon and Washington] also ranked first in system miles per year decommissioned, averaging
312 miles per year.” “As a region, the average cost-per-mile for road decommissioning was $11,343.” [The date range reference appears to be 2000 – 2002.]
According to this paper (“Estimating Costs of Road Decommissions” -
https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st5/Salmon_Workshop/7_Coffin.pdf )
The unit cost ($/km) ranged from $1,829 to $14,990 per kilometer for 6 road decommissions evaluated.
A letter on the subject from Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler:
http://herrerabeutler.house.gov/uploadedfiles/janine_clayton_forest_roads_analysis.pdf Decommissioning a road is not cheap. As an alternative to active decommissioning, the responsible managing agencies should consider the “Roads to Trails” approach or passive decommissioning as the preferred methods. Active decommissioning is expensive and it tends to destroy reasonable access to the affected areas."
