User Management Techniques – Part 6 – Boxed Use

What's in here?

Many things come in boxes, from the small boxes for jewelry to the large heavily built boxes for appliances.  In mythology, it was Pandora’s Box (though in the original Greek it was a jar) that contained all the ills of the world that were let loose when Pandora decided to take a peek.  In religious connotations, the Jewish Ark of the Covenant was an ornate box to hold the original tablets of the commandments.

There is another type of box we will consider, one containing mountain bike trails.  This type of use is known as Boxed Use.  To know what comes in that box, we need to answer the following:

• What is “Boxed Use”?
• How are Boxed Use and Segregated Use different?
• When does Boxed Use make sense?

​Let’s lift the lid and see what Boxed Use all about!

​What is Boxed Use?

Boxed use is very easy to define.  It’s a type of use where trails within a boundary allow mountain biking and trails outside of that boundary may not.  It’s not much more complicated than that.
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Typically, boxed use locations are setup with trails inside the box as bike-primary and, save for access trails/roads, the surrounding trails are hiker only.  But it doesn’t have to be, it can be several different combinations of uses.  It could even be “boxes of use” where there is more than one box, each allowing some form of mountain biking, or different sub-techniques, where one box could be bike preferred and another box could be bike-only.  This technique could even be extended to other user groups, where there might be a box for biking and a box for equestrians.

​How are Boxed Use and Segregated Use different?

The big question is how are boxed use and segregated use different. 

Segregated use has separate trails for separate users, often within the same space.  Those trails might crisscross or intersect at given points, such as historical sites or overlooks.  Boxed use, on the other hand, has trails for one set of users within an area without other trails in that same area.  In other words, it truly is a box, a space just for that user group.

There are differences in the entry points for boxed use versus segregated use also.  For segregated use there is little or no concern about how many entry points there might be on the trail.  So long as the trails are marked and setup as separate at these entry points, the number of them is not relevant.  But with boxed use, entry points are few in numbers, with only one or two.  This is because with the trails for only one user group in that area, its best to control who enters those trails.

A great example of boxed use is the Rebecca Lake Park Preserve in Rockford, MN.  What makes it such a great example is how well defined the box for mountain bike preferred use trails are.  Look at the two maps below to see how the those trails fit into the overall area. The crosshatched area in the first map shows the defined area of the mountain bike trails.  Notice that the “box” isn’t square, it’s really a polygon that fits the terrain where trails were slated to go.  The second map is the actual trail layout inside the box.

Lake Rebecca Park Reserve overall map

Lake Rebecca Park Preserve mountain bike trail map

​When does Boxed Use make sense?

So where does boxed use excel?  Simply put, boxed use is hard to beat in locations where there is plenty of room to create the boxes and/or there is a desire to manage trails with the least amount of overhead possible.  Because a boxed use trail system won’t be sharing the same location with other uses, there has to be the area for those trail systems to have enough mileage to be worth it.  That is likely to mean there won’t be a boxed system in a 40 acre parcel.  The advantage for management of a boxed system provides is similar to a segregated system, where users aren’t interacting.  Also, with a defined boundary, that means there won’t be any accidental cross pollination of user groups.  Because boxed use works best with very few entrance points, trails that need to close for weather or other factors are much easier to open and close.
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In fact, it’s a shame boxed use isn’t used more in urban systems.  It has some strong advantages over other user management techniques for large, likely very high volume, park properties.  Boxed use would seem to be a perfect fit for a lot of non-urban, but still popular parks, that may have mountain biking.

​Final Thoughts

Boxed use isn’t one to normally pull out for neighborhood and district level trails.  But for larger parks, greenspaces and urban wildernesses, it’s hard to beat for ease of design and management.  For some locations, the design aspects would be secondary to the management aspects, largely due to abysmal funding of park lands in the United States.  Every little time and effort savings counts and boxed use can make managing even a large number of miles of trail a snap.

As part of the Knobbies in the Neighborhood presentation a complete User Management Techniques matrix is available that contains all the information presented here and much more.

This is Part 6 in a series on User Management Techniques.  There will be something a little different next time.  A technique that should be avoided like the plague: Alternating Use.