Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA) are seeking feedback on some important MTB projects that have been progressing over the last 10 months or so that relate to trail development and the MTB trail industry. To have your say visit the National Mountain Bike Trail Projects Survey. Survey closes 27 November 2016. Option papers can be viewed on MTBA’s website: http://www.mtba.asn.au/trails/
Now for the long version: To support the increase in mountain biking, significant investments have been made into trail construction and supporting infrastructure across the country. Land managers are increasingly opening, or being pressured to open, new areas to mountain biking through the construction of new trail networks.
Currently there are no national standards or guidelines for mountain bike trail design and construction in Australia. In lieu of national standards or guidelines, trail builder’s and land managers currently rely on high level guidelines published by the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) to justify design and construction decisions.
Land managers and trail builders, together with the wider mountain bike industry, have identified the need for national standards to be developed in order to better manage mountain bike trail developments and to ensure that the trail building industry is fully recognised as a profession, with a peak body and career pathways for people wanting to work in the industry.
MTBA in collaboration with stakeholders from across the mountain biking industry have initiated a project to assess how to best develop and implement national mountain bike trail standards; to establish a professional certification framework; and to establish a not for profit peak body to represent the Australian MTB trail building industry.
The project working group have investigated possible options for all three projects and prepared papers reflecting the outcomes of investigations. These papers are available for land managers, trail builders and the mountain bike community and other interested stakeholders to review and provide feedback and comment and are referenced in this survey. To view the option papers on MTBA’s website go to http://www.mtba.asn.au/trails/
A summary of the results of this survey and targeted consultation will be presented at the 2017 Australian Mountain Bike Summit to be held at Mt Buller in December 2016.