Manly Dam Works


Rob's picture

By Rob - Posted on 06 July 2009

Spoke to someone at the council just now and can share these snippets about what's going on at the Dam, etc.

Seems the work done is based on recommendations from an 'independent consultants' report that was completed Feb '08. If this turns out to be a public document I would be interested to see it.

The rangers at the Dam have to deal with all user groups of course and have arranged for the contractors we see working to alter the course as per this independent report.

As the concerns seem to be mainly safety related I have a bad feeling about what is going to happen to what technical challenges are left. I did point out that a 'newbies dismount' sign or A/B lines might be more appropriate but that would be seen as an admission this was an mountain bike circuit which it isn't (don't forget, Manly Dam is a multi-use trail).

The council will hopefully have a project starting 'this financial year' to look at a 'medium to advanced' type course in the region. Note that project start means talking to various other landowners, etc, etc. Don't anyone get their hopes up, whenever it starts - this will take a long.

hawkeye's picture

Hmm. This doesn't bode well. Doesn't weight of numbers count for anything? There would have to be many times more bikers than walkers, I reckon.

What can we do to collect statistics? Seeing I can't ride for awhile yet, maybe there's something I can do.

jpack's picture

Hey Hawkeye,
if you are bored and interested in collecting statistics, why not stand at a busy point on the trail and count the number of riders, walkers, dogs, rabbits, etc. Do this for several days, including weekdays and weekends and send this info to the council.
OR
to make it easier, setup a camera at a busy point and do the data collecting from the comfort of your own home

Rob's picture

IMHO someone needs to collect some real stats on trail user numbers.

That said - clearly we cannot do it as we're biased. Although if we did have numbers could be a sanity check on whatever source the authorities find more trustworthy.

Check out the gear these guys have:

http://www.pixcontroller.com/

What you want is the cellular version. Put your camera in this box with your SIM card (on an unlimited calls plan to the phone you have at home plugged into your PC) and voila! Eye-wink

I saw somewhere SCA have these for monitoring their land. NPWS should do the same.

hawkeye's picture

Unfortunately I don't have unlimited time. I was planning on doing sample counting at different times and hopefully using that as a base to extrapolate from.

I was off work today with a headcold, but ventured out to the newsagent/post office at Allambie around lunchtime, after which I went for a short walk to inspect the 19th Hole works.

I encountered one walker with dog off leash, and *five* mountain bike riders.

I don't think any perceived bias should stop us from doing the counts at all. Providing our methodology is sound, challenges to the validity of the study can be refuted. Especially if we have video capture.

Rob's picture

I'm just playing devils advocate... unless it's an independent body riding opponents could say we notified people of any survey so they came to skew the results, or accidentally missed other users, or whatever. But like I said, that isn't to say any data collected wouldn't be useful, it would just be questioned is all.

Does anyone know anyone in the statistics dept. at any local schools or a university even? Or feel like speaking to a few such departments? Surely this would be a nice little project they could do as an independent case study?

It's very clear MTB riders are the largest users of these areas. On Sunday while out we saw 1 horse (accompanied by an MTB rider), one family of 4 (with a dog in a National Park), one elderly couple and 10 riders. These are somewhat typical rations, if anything there were more walkers/horses out that day (ie. I usually don't see any).

Oh, we also saw one dog off it's leash wondering around on the Perimeter track with no-one to be seen. I should have checked it's tag and called the rangers, eh?

Dan_RMB's picture

Hey all,

I'm a geoscientist from Sydney Uni. Just spoke with the rangers. They have several independent reports which I'm heading up to read on Friday morning. Once I've read those I'll know where any new study might fit. The enthusiasm to collect usage data is great, but it needs to be approached very carefully in order to produce a study which stands up to external review and criticism. More later...

hawkeye's picture

Cool. Good to have you on board. Agree we need rigour.

@rob: I was randomly thinking last night about how we'd set up a camera so that it didn't get nicked and would still have a good view. I think it can be easily accomplished but the discussion is more appropriate for a PM.

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