Night Riding Revenue Opportunities

From: Wakefield A Model for Night Mountain Bike Riding

ATTACHMENT # 5
NIGHT RIDING REVENUE OPORTUNITIES

Staff considered whether night riding could be treated as a revenue program. Several ideas for making this a fee based activity were considered, but none have been determined to be practical at this time. For each possibility considered, the stumbling block becomes enforcement.

Options For Consideration

Ride Ticket Tags - Everyone that wants to night ride would purchase a ticket, similar to a lift ticket for skiing, and display that on the bike to show they have paid to ride in the park. The ticket would be dated to prevent reuse. This would work if one of two options were in place. First, like Fountainhead, if there were a single point of entry to the trails, a gate attendant at the single point could ensure everyone paid. This is not an option at Wakefield since there are unlimited points of access. Second, a roving park police/patrol could enforce the permit requirement, but no such patrol exists at this time. These methods work well at ski resorts that are open to riding in the summer. They have paid ride patrols and limited points of access.

Fee Based Permits - Charging a fee for permits that allow organized group night rides might be an option and MORE is willing to pay a modest fee for this permit. However, this option falls apart for many of the same reasons discussed with ride tickets. With multiple entry points and no enforcement patrol, there is no way to monitor and control who is associated with an authorized MORE ride and who is not. With multiple entry points to the park, on those nights that night riding is allowed anyone could ride into the park and appear to be legal.

Run Night Riding as a Fee Based Program/Class - This could be either contracted or run in house. This may be a reasonable option. MORE may be willing to contract with the Park Authority or it is likely that "staff/instructors" could be recruited from MORE or other local riders. An in-house program would put the burden of liability more directly on the Park Authority; this would require input from Risk Management, but would be contrary to previous discussions with Risk Management where they favored a permit approach to transfer the risk.

Based on this information, staff believes the best approach is to keep it simple. Per the recommendations, let night riding occur on three given nights at Wakefield Park and Wakefield Park only. Have MORE become a rider patrol on those nights. Require the patrol members have CPR, First Aid and cell phones. The volunteer relationship we now have with MORE is a good one and this will only serve to strengthen it. For example, recently with starting of the new construction project for the two new ball fields Jenny Pate and Cindy McNeil received complaints that trails were being lost in the park. They feared that this could cause an onslaught of bad emails from the mountain bikers and hikers in the park. Before the first tree fell MORE and park volunteers, working with Jenny and Cindy, designed and built a trail reroute almost _ mile long that preserved and improved the trail system. We have a good relationship with MORE and I think the keep it simple recommendation is workable and would fit within the goals we are trying to achieve in the pilot.