The annual City of Hobart Trackcare gathering is on again and this year they'll be chin-wagging all things mountain bike tracks at the Cascade Brewery on Thursday 22 April, 6-7.30pm.
An interesting insight from the March 2021 Dorset Council meeting minutes indicating that the Council received a total of $190,000 in revenue from the Blue Derby bike trails in the 2019-20 financial year.
The latest newsletter from the Cradle Coast Mountain bike club has some great updates on the new Burnie pump track, dial range and the new trails on the west coast. Worth a read.
The Glenorchy City Council has announced tenders are open for a contractor to design and construct a $750,000 facility at Tolosa Park, according to the Mercury Newspaper (15 February 2021),
The long running saga of converting the section of railway between Lilydale Falls and Scottsdale into a rail trail has taken another step forward with the approval of a development application provided to the Dorset Council for the section between Wyena on the Launceston/Dorset municipal boundary and Scottsdale at their meeting on 15 February 2021.
The Hobart City Council endorsed the proposed "Riding the Mountain - A Plan for Improved Mountain Bike Riding in The Foothills of kunanyi / Mount Wellington" on 26 October 2020.
West Coast Council has launched a tender process calling for proposals to construct approximately 35 kms of MTB trails on spectacular Mt Owen in Queenstown.
Tasmania’s Maydena Bike Park has been chosen as the host of the National Mountain Bike Championships for both 2021 and 2022.
The City of Hobart have completed their consultation process on Riding the Mountain: Proposed Mountain Bike Network Plan for the kunanyi Mt Wellington trail network.
The City of Hobart has just released its draft plan for an expanded mountain bike track network on kunanyi / Mount Wellington and they want to hear what you think via their Your Say Hobart website!
It's been a while since I last looked at what has been happening with mountain biking tourism numbers in Tasmania. This is largely because I convinced myself back in 2016 that the numbers collected and published through the Tasmanian Visitor Survey were a very poor resource for capturing those who actually travelled to Tasmania with mountain biking, or even cycling, as a key driver in their decision to come here.
Just to be clear, this isn't a critiscm of that survey, but a reflecton that you don't find out who has travelled to Tasmania to go mountain biking by asking a small sample of those people who came to Tasmania to tick a box indicating whether they undertook any mountain biking or cycling when they were in the State. That just captures too broad a group of people.
The final stage of the Wild Mersey mountain bike track network will be built by South Australian trail building company Trailscapes.
Pretty much all mountain bike trails in Tasmania have now been closed, and events cancelled due to COVID-19.
The West Coast Council has released a draft Trail design for the Mt Owen MTB network for public comment.
Note for an updated/ add on to this review please read my "One Year On" review. It is still useful background to read this article first.
I've been thinking about getting a new electric bike for some time now as my old ebike went well past its end of days, but I just couldn't find one that ticked all the boxes I was looking for ... until I stumbled across the Lekker E-Amsterdam 2nd Generation Commuter eBike.
The National Cycling Participation Survey 2019 is out and the data suggests that 14.8% of Tasmanian residents ride a bicycle in a typical week and more than one third have done so in the past year.
Funding for the George Town Mountain Bike Trail has now been received by the George Town Council, allowing them to proceed with the project.
The City of Hobart is developing a mountain bike network plan to improve riding experiences on the the lower slopes of kunanyi / Mt Wellington and is seeking input from users up until 31 August 2019.
An extra 16kms of trail opened as part of the Wild Mersey Mountain Bike network on June 15, 2019 almost doubling the size of the trails available.
According to the Examiner Newspaper both major parties have committed to extending the $1.47million federal government grant for the North East Rail Trail.
The grant which was set aside for the recreational walking and cycle path is due to expire in March 2020 and the North East Recreation Trail Committee was concerned that the promised money would be lost if the work had not begun by then.