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What would you say?
Hi all
If you had a meeting with the State Government and Sydney Northern Region Councils what specific things would you ask about or what ideas would you put forward?
TrailCare has these contacts or already has meetings scheduled. What would you like us to discuss?
Things like more trails are obvious and generic. What specific things do you want to put forward?
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Biggest plus I could see would be for there to be some process / forum through which a linked / co-ordinated mtb strategy could be progressed. There are opportunities in the northern beaches / northern Sydney area to link stuff together to spread the rider and land management load and broaden the experience for both.
I may be biased because I prefer just exploring / revisiting many trails (and training for mtb enduros) rather than hitting up one track all the time - I value variety over going round in circles - but I think there are some opportunities here.
I know we are limited by some extent by the Sydney landscape, but would be great to have trails that don't get closed by the first glimpse of rain, I don't want to damage trails when they are soaked so don't ride them but surely there is a way to design and maintain trails that will minimize down time/destruction when it get's wet
Night riding officially recognised
Facility and ability to hold sanctioned events and races on the northern beaches - DH and XC
1. When will the illegal access to the Red Hill trails by motorbike riders be stopped?
2. Are organised trail maintenance days ever going to happen? (Particularly Red Hill & Manly Dam)
3. What is happening with the Bantry Bay trail extension?
Cheers
Hi Simon
I would like the issue of education be discussed, what strategies are in place to educate the wider community about MTB and how we are proactive in the search for environmentally friendly/sustainable solutions for MTB trails. We often get a bad rep amongst the public we need to some how change this perception.
Part 2 is to educate those within the MTB community on the damage we are capable of causing. We have all seen how a minority group can cause huge problems especially when we ride or build illegal trails or even ride legal trails when they have been closed for some reason. It frustrates me when we have had a truck load of rain to see some tool ridng down the parkway with a mud coated bike. I just know that the few trails we have to ride are being abused.
I too would like a plan for trail maintenance on the northern beaches, especialy the Dam, it is being riden to death!!
With mtb featuring in tourism NSW ads and pamphlets I'd like to see a stronger push and funding from tourism to help signpost and better promote legal trail systems.
While I have always supported efforts on the Northern Beaches for better MTb access I wouldn't want things at state level to get bogged, excuse the pun, down in that one area. NSW is bigger than Manly dam and talks at state level should reflect a broader range than just Newcastle Sydney Wolongong.
MTB tourism & the $'s that it circulates
Any chance you could compile some more regional stuff for us? Not everyone is on Global Riders and most of us don't race so our rider contacts are local.
I agree that when given the chance to raise things at State level make the most of it for the State.
I know there was a perception that Northern Sydney riders slowed up the Discussion Paper, we are also in the heartland of the anti lobby with many of them driving their State organisations from here. We are now on much better terms and getting support from many of them. The key NPWS and OEH staff working on this were also based here as are the main MP's, ministers and senators.
The reason for us now going to State is that to get through 6km of bush in Northern Sydney we need coordination of 4 government departments, 2 local councils and 2 private land owners on one of our projects.
Another 2.5 minute DH track is a Council and 2 Government departments and a private land owner.
The private land owners are also organisations controlled by boards.
This repeats itself over and over around Sydney.
For these two projects I have been needing to liaise with 126 government employees, green group members and Aboriginal Land Council representatives. These two projects are 5.1km apart and 7 minutes in the car.
Unfortunately that's Sydney where land is scarce and chopped into small chunks.
If anyone State wide is having similar issues please let me know or anything else specific as per the other posts.
If your talking to the State Govt, something we have learnt from the Glenrock project that will be relevant statewide is worth bringing up.
We, as you guys are doing, fought for access and we ultimately got it. All good there an no complaints, but this led to something we never envisaged, a massive increase in trail usage. If places like Glenrock and other priority sites in the State MTB Strategy are to be successful, there needs to be funding for ongoing maintenance of the trails.
We thought, and I think if usage didn't increase in the scale it did, that the volunteer group could have kept on top of the maintenance and rebuild work that needed to be done. But with the massive increase in usage, we can't keep up on the maintenance, we aren't getting to priority works that were identified in the trail study and there is not much the local NPWS can do to help due to funding/resourcing.
If the strategy is to be the success it can be, and if we don't want to hand fuel to those who oppose our access, the ongoing care of the trails needs to be considered by the powers to be. The NPWS are now promoting the trails, which is leading to the increase in usage, but the volunteer trail crews are getting burnt out, some people disillusioned and the only way to rectify the issue is to allocate some funding for ongoing trail works.
Happy to talk more on the issue, but any pilot site in Northern Sydney (be it NPWS, Council or other land) is doomed if the long term maintenance isn't factored into the planning and funding.
With legal trails comes a massive increase in usage. We didn't expect it and weren't really prepared for it. Hopefully others can learn from our experience. Certainly it should be discussed at a higher level than the local parks. the guys in the NPWS up here have been awesome with the resources they have, but they can't do much more without help from above.
I think one of the problems is we keep talking about pilots and setting precedents.
How many more pilots and precedents do we have to go through?
NSW had approved single trail in NPs 30 years ago. The Oaks in BMNP and Glowworm tunnel In Wollemi. Not to mentiin Cannonball run in thredbo (though that may be a special case)
The Oaks is on of the most utelised trails in the state.
Many Dam has been running almost as long. Blue mt council had had a intrim Dirt Jump Strategy with approved sites in the late 90s or early 2000s. the Mt York trails ertr taken over by them and officially approved for riding in 2009 and Knapsack not long after with intrim trails (Both Dh and XC) Those are now in the final stages of full approval after some hard work by the BMORC guys.
Lithgow had a DH track on council managed crown land in the mid 90s... and we're building another that had all sorts of issues to contend with.
Every one is looking at the issues in their own back yards thinking they are the first to do it they need to do something special to "set a precedent" and that is somehow going to be the magic bullet. We need to do a better job of compiling the success stories already out there
Simon. I set this up a while ago with that in mind http://wiki.nswmtb.asn.au/index.php?title=Main_Page
Lack of input from others and lack of time by me means that it fell by the way side. It would be great if you and other keen advocates would take it over and promote it as a data base of what is working where
To an extent up until the NPWS Mtb strategy came out, I think each area was different. The previous cycling strategy was so vague that each area really was pushing vigil territory because it was all at the mercy of the particular staff at the local level.
Now we have the strategy, I wholeheartedly agree, the time for pilot studies is over. Its all been done the state over and we should (and the various land managers) should be sitting down and focusing on what worked, what hasn't and why.
The works been done we should be learning from it.
Unfortunately some areas will take a while to be dragged kicking and screaming into the present. Thats the nature of change and we will have to deal with it and the people in the sydney basin are probably the most affected by this.
Brining it all back to funding though, if the funding was there as a carrot, I bet a lot of the apprehension from the local managers would dissolve.
I'd agree with that Sammy.
I suppose without the funding the all these "pilots" have going in but there hasn't been the follow up data collection and collation.
I think it's more of a political pilot in Sydney than a technical pilot. As everyone says there are plenty of examples around.
A pilot sounds much more cautious and less permanent. There is widespread belief by those that are unsure about mountain biking that Sydney sandstone soils are nothing like anything that has been seen before. These people have state influence.
In Sydney we could also just audit all the unofficial tracks and get enough data on what works and what doesn't in these conditions. This would give a robust data set and show a worst case situation with no formal management or maintenance for 20-30 years. It would also show the significance of other concerns about bikes relating to seed carriage and pathogens.
However by doing a pilot we at least get a new trail as well.
Outside of Sydney things are going faster. For example in Livingstone NP trails have been designed and built in less time than we have spent discussing local pilots.
Glenrock is another obvious example.
Thanks for the link, time we caught up. Have sent a PM.
My point is, its one thing to put the pilot trail in and go, oh look we have a shiny new trail. Thats only half the battle.
Give it 12 months when the usage really kicks in, and maintenance and tweaks are required, but you can't fund it. You can guarantee at that point the usual suspects will pop up and use it as ammo to attempt to shut things down. Not through the fault of the trails, not through the fault of the users, but because everyone was so focussed getting them, looking after them under intense use wasn't factored in.
Its exactly what happened to us. We had funding to do initial works as outlined in the POM. Nothing for ongoing maintenance though, and while the trails are in reasonable condition, its selling short what was envisaged by riders and the NPWS, and it is causing a lot of angst among the volunteers who can't keep up with a growing list of work.
When your negotiating the "pilot" make sure there is provisions for the ongoing care by what ever agency is in charge. Don't factor in it all to be done on a volunteer basis because when the usage increases, your core group of trail workers will be burnt out as they try and keep up.
Good points and will definitely take this on board.
Another concern of ours is on the technical difficulty of the track. If its too low I'm not expecting there to be a strong group of volunteers. The active members of TrailCare at least are mostly at the more technical end and would ride elsewhere.
Also if it's too low the 6-10km of track won't take more than 20-50 minutes to ride. 10km of technical can take 2 hours.
Agreed Simon,
None riders seldom understand just what we can ride safely.
When judging a race track MTBA commissaires don't look at how "ridable" they think the track is. They look at things like visibly coming into a obstacle and hiden dangers in likely fall zones.
Perhaps we need to stress the importance of having trained commissaires judge trails and not cotton wool merchants?
We had that very issue with the technicality of trails, it took a little bit but there are now sections with A/B lines in Glenrock and bits like "The Chute" are reasonably technical, with an easy separate alternate line around it.
Other complete trails, like BJ's are being built deliberately to a higher standard and signposted as such.
The hardest thing is to get people building to think beyond what their immediate needs are. If you don't you end up with something too technical with no lesser alternatives, or the complete opposite. Neither of which are ideal outcomes.
Thanks, guys, this is excellent information.
It presents both an encouragement and a challenge.
Do you have any stats on before/after rider numbers?
Not for glenrock. The glenrock evidence is really based on the numbers of vehicles in the carpark and what you see on the trail. We wanted to put counters in at a few key spots, but purchasing the counters is an issue for us.
We had some data from trail counters at Awaba, the data is a few years old though. Off the top of my head I can't remember what the figures were, but I could find out. I would suspect that the new trails in Northern Sydney would experience a lot higher usage.
Np had some figures for the oaks. Again it's a couple of years old but from memory it had ridiculous peaks of 1700 riders a day on weekends and averages of a few hundred or something