Collaborate to protect

Let's make sure these two can make a better trail proposal

“Be a team player.”  You probably have heard that phrase from the first years of your schooling.  It’s almost always used in conjunction with the idea that doing a project or activity with others will produce a better result.  Whether that is always true is debatable.

But the one area where collaboration can produce positive results is in the field of urban mountain biking public meetings and in trail layout.  And there is one method that manages to take both those disparate parts of the process and combine them.  That method is known as Collaborative Ecological Layout.
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Why should we consider this method?  What is Collaborative Ecological Layout?  How does it solve many of the issues common to mountain biking trail proposals in urban areas?

Where too many mountain biking proposals end up dying

​What often happens in city meetings about urban mountain biking

If you spend any time reading about urban mountain proposal and how they go thru public meetings and public approval processes, a depressing reality comes to the forefront: unless the region or state where these trails are proposed has a history of doing urban trails, success is not guaranteed, and in a few places, a rarity.

Far too many times trail proposals find themselves in a whirlwind of controversy after “concerned citizens” (who are almost always older and “white”) begin to claim the process has left out important points.  In fairness, we have to admit that often they are not completely wrong.  Far too many mountain bike organizations and cities have a “we got this” mentality and don’t call in persons that can help them through the process.  However, that being said, a lot of the concern these citizens bring forward are, at best, concern trolling, at worst, a smear tactic against the proposal.  That tactic, that has a rather unfortunate name of “JAQing off”, is designed to both raise doubts and make the process (in this case, for mountain biking trails) seem flawed.  Almost exclusively, these concerns are based on two principle areas: environmental impact and safety. 

So how does a city work through the concerns, real or imagined, of citizens?  This is the moment where many cities’ public process fails.  There is no way with a public process with public meetings to address safety and environmental concerns without long (and expensive) studies.  Those studies would most likely be done by consultants and those consultants introduce another problem: the black box.

What is the black box?  It’s when you know inputs go in one side of the process and decisions come out the other side.  However, in that moment of those decisions, the choices people make are unknowable.  They are, as it were, hidden away in a black box.  Hidden moments of decisions, of course, tend to feed skepticism or conspiracy theories.  This creates another round of questions.
In order, here are the problems often encountered with mountain biking proposals:

• The city (and often the club proposing the trails) are unprepared for questions regarding impacts and safety.
• The only way to answer these questions or concerns is with a study or studies.
• Those studies, done by consultants, would produce a ripe source for even more questions.

How does Collaborative Ecological Layout solve these issues?

​Collaborative Ecological Layout – What it is

As its name suggests Collaborative Ecological Layout consists of two parts: a collaborative trail layout component and an ecological review component.

The collaborative component consists of a group of citizens led by a person (or persons) with trail design experience.  These citizens, who should equally represent the proposed uses for the trail, have two important purposes.  First, they provide background and tribal knowledge of the property.  Neighbors will have a wealth of knowledge that only neighbors can know.  Past uses, structures and issues are some of the types of information they can provide that might have no other official source.  Second, these same neighbors will form an information conduit to their neighbors and the community.  This prevents the belief that the trail design is in a black box, shrouded in mystery.

Usually, there is some trail design basics class to help the non-designer citizens understand a general overview of sustainable trails.  For those of you that took the International Mountain Biking Association’s   trail certification, if would be roughly the first half-day of that class.  American Trails has several webinars and guidelines that could be useful for this type of limited training also. Remember the training isn’t about turning half a neighborhood into trail bosses.  It’s about giving them the fundamentals to make suggestions to the trail design that would be helpful.  If, while working with the trail designer, a collaborative member mentions that an area is prone to slides or has nesting sites, this group should have enough knowledge to make suggestions to avoid that area.

While this is going on, flagging can be used to allow them to visualize where the trail will go.  Even though modern GPS units have rendered flagging someone out of date, these citizens won’t be equipped with GPS units and they sure won’t have the experience to visualize the trail in their heads.  It’s likely this trail will have parts flagged and re-flagged multiple times as the group works through the full trail layout.  That is OK.

After the collaborative group has created a trail alignment, it is walked one last time, possibly with more flags placed where needed or some rearranged.  At this point the ecological part of the Collaborative Ecological Layout process begins.

The ecological component consists of environmental and social professionals reviewing the corridor for impacts.  Exactly who these professionals are and what areas of disciplines they represent would be determined by the land manager or the local, regional, state or federal environmental guidelines.  It’s likely they would include a biologist to review the biology surrounding the trail corridor.  In many areas, a geologist reviewing the soils might be warranted.  Lastly, depending on the location and history, historians or sociologists may be used to provide a social framework for the trails.  This is especially true if First Nations groups are in the area.  They would have history, written and oral, that could prove useful.
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Should any of the environmental professionals find any issues, they would make suggestions on re-routing the proposed trail alignment.  This would continue until the trail layout can satisfy the environmental professionals.

​How Collaborative Ecological Layout solves the problems of mountain biking access proposals

As we discussed before, there are points where failure of a city process for access can occur:

• The proposal is susceptible to “just asking questions” attacks
• Answering questions about environmental impact and safety would likely require expensive studies
• Those studies, as well as parts of the cities’ internal process, are black boxes to the citizens of the city
• Studies can create even more “just asking questions” attacks as well as conspiracy theories

​How does Collaborate Ecological Layout solve these issues?  It does so in three different ways.

First, the process is entirely open to the public.  Because citizens are involved from the start, and involved in a meaningful way, the citizens themselves become the conduit to get their neighbors onboard.  It’s easy to attack or endlessly question a staff report written by a “faceless bureaucrat”, it becomes much harder when it’s your neighbor Susan who makes you Christmas cookies.

Second, as this process uses the neighbor’s knowledge of the park in question, it leads to higher quality trails as they know where all the bodies are buried, so to speak.  They also would know how they, as neighbors, would want to use the park.  There is balance here, there needs to be the opinion of the mountain bikers involved, but if anything, this push and pull of desires balances the entire process.

​Third, and maybe most importantly, instead of spending money on a single consultant who may hire sub-contractors in fields of biological or geological work, the money will be directly going to those that would normally be doing the review work.  By cutting out the middleman, you are reducing the overhead in the budget.  In other words, for the same amount spent on environmental review, you get a more detailed review of the proposed areas of the trails.

In the end, when it comes time for the standard public process, the Collaborative Ecological Layout has a leg up on any competing method.  It’s almost impossible to attack.  At all points, it’s an open box with no surprises.  The environmental and social aspects have been completely covered before the public process starts.  Often its actually cheaper as the money spent is spent on the professionals that actually matter, not consultants.

​Making Collaborative Ecological Layout work even better

There are some simple things that can make the Collaborative Ecological Layout work even better:

• Limit the number of citizens involved in the collaborative part of the process.  Even under the best of circumstances, its herding cats.  The less cats you have to herd, the easier it is.  A good number would be 3 representatives from each user group, plus a few alternates.  For a dual use (hiker/biker) trail proposal that would be a total of 9 people (professional designer, 3 hikers, 3 bikers, 1 alternate for each group).
• Its best to keep some sort of log of time and opinions as the collaborative part of the process goes forward.  Nothing crazy.  Maybe just a recording of start/stopping times and a comment card for each session.
• For the ecological review part of the process, at the end, the professionals should do a letter report at a minimum.  This can be used during the public part of the process to show inspections have been done.
• It’s always good to reward volunteers in some way for their willingness to work with the land manager.  Many people are more than happy with a little recognition and praise.

​Collaborative Ecological Layout FTW

​While the Collaborative Ecological Layout cannot and should not replace official requirements of the city or the state trails are to be proposed in, it can make trail proposals easier and more likely to succeed.  If you are a mountain bike club or a city looking at proposing mountain bike trails, you would be hard pressed to find a methodology better than Collaborative Ecological Layout.