LPG
likes thicc birds
Bright is great to shuttle but it is still an awesome place without. The cost of the road should have been dealt with with the changes to the self shuttling rules. With the weather and logging activity at bright it would be hard pressed to say that shuttling is the cause of damage, and if it actually is why not just adjust the price to suit?The main issue is the unsealed road and the costs associated with maintaining it, which is why many locals who don't shuttle are pissed off and Council won't fund the maintenance of the road because it is on HVP's leasehold. The original reason for the fee for access was to reduce the usage and I think it didn't reduce the numbers as much as anticipated.
There is also the issue of the risk of liability and the need for users to sign a waiver which is taken care of by the new structure but could have been achieved through a QR code and a competition to win a bike or similar that would have got good take up.
There is no way they will be able to police it as you can enter the park from so many locations and nobody is going to want the job of going around asking everyone for proof of payment. Going to be a lot of agro over Christmas for all the people who are out of the loop on what's going on.
The Alpine Cycling Club is mandating that all members who use the park as part of a club function must have paid the fee and there are discounts in place for participating in sanctioned trail maintenance days, ACC members and for the junior program.
What worries me is that the money will be spent maintaining the road and not the trails as peoples expectations of what a pay to ride park are versus the current maintenance of Mystic are very different and the risk of loosing some of the free labour that maintained the trails. Dig to ride gets thrown out the window when you have to pay to ride.
Regarding insurance, why don't they just have a rule where all users need to have a Aus cycling license like so many other private spots to cover insurance instead of making a location specific fee? I don't know specific but this seems to be enough for many private locations that are actually businesses (I'm thinking Green Valleys in NSW but I'm sure others are similar).
I don't mean to be argumentative, I just have questions. It seems like something has caught them by surprise or has been mismanaged and they are now trying to claw themselves out of a hole and are piasibg people off in the process.