Stick with me on this one.
I'm pondering on the long term sustainability of the trails in my (new, moved from the UK) area. Whilst the volunteer builders and maintainers are great (I am one), there is a limit to what they can do. Now I know this will be weather and geology / geography dependent, but the 'equation' in my head goes something like:
X days of labor can maintain Y miles of trail with Z riders per year
This is a finite capability. There is a limit to what can be maintained within a certain number of days of labor. Let's stick with manual labor for now.
So. We like trails to be popular. We might even be trying for Trail Center status to draw more people in and more people ride those trails. So there has to be a break point. That break point is where the trails are degrading and the maintenance can't keep up because the rider numbers have increased / the weather has changed / volunteer numbers have stayed constant or even gone down.
I think that this is a sensible question and it would help groups understand their own capabilities if they thought about it. I want to think ahead and do something now to prevent what must happen if trails get more popular but other facets don't change. I think that understanding what you can actually cope with informs what you try to do in the future.
This all comes from my experiences in Bristol, England where a honey pot area was getting trashed. The solution is a mix of volunteer maintenance and pro-built and pro-maintained trails that sees 140,000 riders per year and copes with it! I just want to help people learn from the solutions other people developed from the same problems.
What do you think? Do you know what you can cope with?
I'm pondering on the long term sustainability of the trails in my (new, moved from the UK) area. Whilst the volunteer builders and maintainers are great (I am one), there is a limit to what they can do. Now I know this will be weather and geology / geography dependent, but the 'equation' in my head goes something like:
X days of labor can maintain Y miles of trail with Z riders per year
This is a finite capability. There is a limit to what can be maintained within a certain number of days of labor. Let's stick with manual labor for now.
So. We like trails to be popular. We might even be trying for Trail Center status to draw more people in and more people ride those trails. So there has to be a break point. That break point is where the trails are degrading and the maintenance can't keep up because the rider numbers have increased / the weather has changed / volunteer numbers have stayed constant or even gone down.
I think that this is a sensible question and it would help groups understand their own capabilities if they thought about it. I want to think ahead and do something now to prevent what must happen if trails get more popular but other facets don't change. I think that understanding what you can actually cope with informs what you try to do in the future.
This all comes from my experiences in Bristol, England where a honey pot area was getting trashed. The solution is a mix of volunteer maintenance and pro-built and pro-maintained trails that sees 140,000 riders per year and copes with it! I just want to help people learn from the solutions other people developed from the same problems.
What do you think? Do you know what you can cope with?