User Management Techniques – Part 7 – Alternating Use

Flying car concept from 1943

While man has always sought to fly, in the post-World War 2 time period, there was a growing interest in the idea of “flying cars”, that is personal flying devices that could pull into a garage and then whisk their inhabitants off to a location.  At the time, it seemed like the stars had aligned for just such a reality.  Thru the war, 2 inventions were refined that seemed to make this possible: the gas turbine and the helicopter.  In fact, German engineers had developed the intermesh helicopter, a type that auto hovers.  Many of those engineers and scientists found their way to the United States via Operation Paperclip.

On paper, a flying car sounds great.  Faster than ground transportation and able to go point-to-point versus following roads.  However, in practice, the idea of a flying car is a nightmare.  Besides the complexities of actually flying an aircraft, there is the matter of preventing all these flying cars from running into one another.  Then there is the fact that conditions in air are always changing as the atmosphere takes on many properties of a fluid in a vessel, with competing air currents and changes in air flow.  From that time till today, history is littered with failed flying car ideas, some famous, some not so famous.  In the end, the idea of the flying car remains (and likely will always remain) an idea.

When it comes to user management techniques, there is one that sounds like a great idea on paper, but a nightmare in actual usage: Alternating Use.  This leads to the following questions:

• What is “Alternating Use”?
• Why is Alternating Use such a bad idea?
• How are other management techniques superior?

​Let’s see how the idea is not matched by the reality.

​What is Alternating Use?

Alternating Use is deceptively simple:  one user group is allowed full use of the trails one day and another user group is allowed to use the trails another day.  This typically is seen as “odd-even”, where, say, hikers are odd numbered days (1, 3, 5, etc.) and mountain bikers would be even numbered days (2, 4, 6, etc.).

This should not be confused with reversing of trails based on a schedule or odd-even.  Many trail systems do this to add interest and prevent uneven wear on shared systems.  Those types of user changes don’t remove users, just the direction they move.
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Think of alternating use as segregated use on a schedule.

Two Popular Mechanics covers with flying car concepts.

​Why is Alternating Use such a bad idea?

There are a few examples of alternating use in the United States, such as Mill Creek Canyon in Salt Lake, UT.  So, to suggest those trail systems are somehow failures isn’t fair to them.  But as we have been considering user management techniques, we have been discussing them in relation to new trails, not existing ones.  And it’s in this moment that alternating use becomes a really bad idea.
 
Often alternating use is floated as the solution to gaining access to existing trails.  What you find in drilling down in these proposals for alternating use is that there is some user group conflict or consternation about adding new users to an existing set of trails.  Along comes someone riding forth suggesting alternating use is the answer.

But let’s think about that scenario for a second.  If there are existing trails, it’s very unlikely that they were built to modern sustainable standards.  That is an important aspect of using the trails for mountain bikes.  Why?  Because without those guidelines being followed, there is no guarantee that the trails can take the strain of mountain bikes.

Let’s be more specific here.   When mountain bike trail advocates or designers say, “hiking and mountain biking have similar impacts to soil and similar erosive patterns,” they are referring to trails built to modern sustainable standard, i.e. IMBA 2004/USFS 2007.  Any trails not meeting that set of standards may not be (and likely aren’t) sustainable.  This means more maintenance (at the least) and maybe even continued access issues if the belief becomes that mountain bikers “rip up” the trails.

Okay, let’s pretend that as part of the alternating use coming to these trails, there will be an upgrading of the trails to said sustainable standards.  But if you are going to do that amount of work, why not upgrade them to accept another user management technique, like shared or preferred use?  Or why not build a completely new trail system as segregated or boxed?

While trail impact and maintenance aspects are bad enough, here is where wheels really fall off alternating use: land manager and public management overhead.  If users are forced to use the trails per a schedule, what happens when something interrupts that schedule?  Say the trails have been closed for a week due to a storm event and the day they reopen is a hiker day.  The likelihood is that some percentage of mountain bikers, itchy to ride, will head out to ride the trails.  Who gets the blowback from hikers that complain (rightfully) that mountain bikers are on the trails on their designated day?  The land manager and, by extension, the city.  What happens if a group wants to have an event on a day that isn’t their day?  Let’s say a trail running club wants to do a race on the first Saturday of the month, but per the calendar, that is mountain biker day?  Who has to work out the trades or soothe ruffled feathers?  The land manager and, by extension, the city.

We haven’t even discussed signage, trail closures, patrolling and enforcement.  All these get more complicated on trails that are whipsawing between user groups.
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If the stated goal of thinking about using alternating use is to allow access on trails that there is some disagreement on, then alternating use doesn’t solve that.  These user groups will blame the other user group for any negative thing that happens on that user groups’ day.  On top of that, users that shows up on the “wrong” day will be used as an example of how “those other guys” aren’t following the rules.

​How are other management techniques superior?

Saying that all other management techniques are superior seems like a big leap.  But it’s not.

First, from a trails maintenance and usage perspective.  All user management techniques rely on some form of trail maintenance.  Sustainable trails are just that, they aren’t maintenance free.  If we have trails that are managed as shared, preferred, segregated, hybrid or boxed, there is a clear method of constructing, managing and maintaining trails using those management techniques.  Not so with alternating use.  Also, again, alternating use is brought forth as “the answer” a lot of times for existing trails.  Those trails might not meet the requirements of mountain biking, so either we are sinking costs into upgrades or burning volunteers out with maintaining unsustainable trails.
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Second, the land management overhead is much smaller with all the other uses.  Even shared use, that has the most manager overhead, works with far less overhead than alternating use.  There is some work that has to go into the trail during construction and signage, but after that, there isn’t much to manage.  What is left is basically setting up a volunteer patrol group and monitoring them.  They take care of everything else.  As you work down the user management techniques from there, the level of overhead required drops.  But alternating use flips the script.  Not only do you have the trail design and signage overhead up front, but now every day comes with its own management requirements, whether the user group is this one or that.  That is not even counting the phone calls as one user group tells you about the people that were on the trails on the wrong day.

​Final Thoughts

Alternating use just doesn’t have any advantages over other user management techniques.  It has some clear disadvantages.  Where it’s been used, it’s been used for years, decades in most cases.  But it’s been superseded by other user management techniques.  Techniques that are better for the users, for safety and for the land manager.  In other words, alternating use should just be avoided.

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 7 in a series on User Management Techniques.  This will the last article on user management techniques.