Council did employ some people for maintenance of trails, however a couple of people won’t put a dent in a 160km network, let alone the entire Yarra Ranges shire.
Hopefully there is the funded positions from the council (it's also beneficial that they have some trail building skills too, not just from the council grounds crew) as the size of the proposed network would be hard to manage with volunteers alone.
Derby have two fulltime trail crew for about 120km of trail
Absolutely - didn't mean that to sound like I thought it was enough or a good/sustainable model, more that that seems to be the legacy format such as at Silvan/Youies etc (including all the obstacles and roadblocks to club maintenance as you say).
I'm not sure that they are even two full FTE's any more
Last I heard they did, but I do know when a trail gets a big makeover, like they have just recently done on Upper Flickerty Sticks and Atlas, they get World Trail in to do that work.
No idea but i was chattign to a bloke on an ebike with a chainsaw on his backpack and he said he was paid for by delwp. This was at Lake Mountain. It's amazing what can get done when you commercialise shuttles and it's a politically influential place like marysville.
Lots of different people contributed to clearing the trails with many locals and YRMTB members on the tools.
Don't think it's an all or nothing approach per se. YRC will be asking for all because they're not going to get more than they ask for. But off the back of the EES, the planning minister could partially approve the proposal (e.g. the trails that are on state land but not those in national park, or not those trails that are considered too close to sensitive ecosystems etc). @caad9 is probably on the money though the timeline might be shorter. If they get approval to build 50-60km of trail that'd still be great and shouldn't take 5y to deliver.
Up in the air until the locals have finished moaning about mountain bikers killing wingless flys, buying all the milk, lighting fires, and beating their partners.
Hopefully if a good percentage of the arguments against to a sane person are bordering on loony ,Some of this stuff is flat out bonkers.
Lady yesterday was carrying on about packs of wild dogs in the area, because she saw a wee dog with no tail in the area and heard some barking one night.
Lady today was all riled up about how these extreme sports make us alpha male types aggressive and promotes domestic violence
And then there was old mate Fred who went on a full grandpa Simpson rant about global warming and how cutting down even a couple of trees will destroy the planet. I think. Mostly it was semi coherent rbling that seemed to change topic mid sentence. Super entertaining
Honestly, these people are clutching at straws. The MTB community is all positivity and showing what we're about, and the nimbys are all slander and demonizing.
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