New Track for Sydney's Northern Beaches - Garringa Bike Plan

[alchemist]

http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/ne ... bike-plan/

[trailgumby]

I've been working with Dr Simon Kean, Rob Rainton from NobMob, Hugh Flower and a small group of likeminded others to help move this and other mountain bike trail opportunities in the Northern Beaches forward. We've just formalised ourselves by incorporating under the name "Trail Care", as this gives the authorities a tangible group to be able to reference.

The group will be open to all mountain bikers. Our goals are:
* to facilitate communication between mountain bikers and land managers,
* to propose trails and work with land managers to enable their implementation,
* to enable volunteer trail construction and maintenance by providing a communication focal point and coordinating industry involvement including the provision of incentives to volunteer trail fairies.

It's been a long slog and, as Simon noted, he's been working on it with Rob since 2009.

A pivotal moment was the attempt by Warringah Council staff to effectively shut down Manly Dam in February last year. The avalanche response from constituents and visitors, and local media criticism woke everybody up to the fact that mountain biking was a mainstream activity participated in by a broad spread of age groups and demographic sectors.

Throughout, we've been emphasising the common ground we have with environmental groups in wanting to enjoy the bush sustainably, and the fact that we have proven practices available (IMBA trail guidelines) to achieve that outcome has dealt with nearly all of their objections. The only groups we haven't been able to get on side are those groups that are ideologically opposed to mountain bikes (eg, Colong Foundation), and by their hard-line non-rational approach they isolated themselves anyway.

This announcement by the environment minister is just the start... there is a lot more to come.

[alchemist]

It's been a long slog and, as Simon noted, he's been working on it with Rob since 2009.

And many others have been working on it for much much longer.

[trailgumby]

Your point being?

[alchemist]

It's been a very long slog

[trailgumby]

Yes, a very long slog indeed.

As an outsider (at first) to all that looking in, and now looking back, it wasn't until the following submission went in that traction started to be gained. The fact that one of the authors had a PhD in sustainability and qualifications in noise opened a lot of doors. It has since been referenced in Parliament and by the Canadian equivalent of National Parks.

http://nobmob.com/system/files/Oxford+F ... NoBMoB.pdf