Segway Tours Receive Warning From Park District

By Anna Deem in News on Aug 7, 2010 6:00PM

Segway tour operators received a warning this week from the Chicago Park District in the form of an email. "Please make sure your tours know to stay on the paths, concrete or blacktop," the message said via the Chicago Sun-Times. "If you see an operator of a tour who guides their tour on the grass, around gardens or anywhere else other than designated paths, please report immediately. If you can get a photo of the culprits, even better."

Daniel Hough, who lives across the street from Grant Park, spoke to the Sun-Times about the photos he sent to Park District officials of tire tracks in the grass between 9th Street and Balbo Avenue. "They were careening through the most beautiful, manicured and delicate areas of Grant Park on the grass separating the hedges from the flower beds and leaving tire tracks in the grass and flower beds," said Hough.

None of the six Segway companies currently operating in the city have come clean to the Park District, in fact most are denying that they have anything to do with the tire tracks. "We got that e-mail from Park District and they might as well have told us to not drive off the Michigan Avenue bridge, because we're not doing that, either," said Matt Golas, City Segway's operations manager in Chicago, to the Sun-Times. Golas went on to say that he's prepared to turn in other Segway companies to protect the industry.