Trail maintenance is broken
Shuswap Trail Alliance photo
For sustainable trails, BC needs a dedicated maintenance fund
During the pandemic, Pemberton went from a weekend destination to Vancouver’s backyard. Suddenly the mountain bike trails, designed for a community of 5,200 people, were hosting a city's worth of riders.
“The impact on the trails was dramatic and immediate,” says Bree Thorlakson, the executive director of the Pemberton Off-road Cycling Association. “Every day was like our busiest weekend.”
The volunteers who do most of the trail maintenance struggled to keep up with the wear and tear of so many extra tires. Eroded berms and jumps, potholes and collapsed trail edges made trails dangerous. Things have eased up, but the residual impacts linger.
And not just in Pemberton. Just about every trail network faced the same crushing influx of extra traffic, and it has led many to the same conclusion as Thorlakson: “We need a different model for funding trail maintenance and development. The one we’ve got isn’t sustainable.”
It’s something Louise Pedersen hears more and more. And she thinks a dedicated trail fund is part of the solution.
“Our member organizations tell us they are exhausted,” says Pedersen, the executive director of the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C., which represents 60 outdoor recreation clubs and associations. “It’s becoming increasingly hard to find volunteers willing to do all the unpaid work that needs doing. Especially when the need is relentless with more people on the trails, more floods, more wildfires. It’s challenging for volunteers to stay on top of it all.”
And it’s not just in community-run trail networks. BC Parks and Recreation Sites and Trails BC manage many of the 44,000 kilometres of trails in the province. They also struggle to keep up with maintenance. This is partially a legacy problem. In the 1980s and 1990s, the provincial government invested in new campgrounds and trails without a long term maintenance plan. With progressive budget cuts and the impacts of inflation, plus increasing amoritization costs associated with the agencies’ capital programs, the maintenance backlog has increased to the point where they have had to abandon trails and recreation sites and reduce maintenance. In some cases volunteer groups have stepped in to take over. But even here they struggle.
“We have volunteer clubs that want to help BC Parks, but the agency doesn't even have the capacity to sign the volunteer partnership agreements needed for them to do the work,” says Pedersen.
The solution, she says, starts with the provincial government properly funding BC Parks and Rec Sites and Trails and then investing in making it easier for community-based trail stewardship groups and First Nations to help maintain and enhance BC’s trails and recreation amenities.
This is not news. During the 2022 budget consultation, the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services recommended the provincial government ”provide increased funding for parks, recreation and trails to address gaps in maintenance and staff, including dedicated funding to community-based organizations for trail maintenance and development.”
The B.C. government has provided some extra funding towards recreation infrastructure in the last couple of years, but in a piecemeal fashion. Willing partners, like trail steward groups, need reliable and dedicated funding for the ongoing upkeep and enhancement of trails, Pedersen says.
“Easy access, consistent funding would allow them to spend less time fundraising and more time actually improving trails and developing valuable community assets,” she says.
It is not a novel idea. The Manitoba government and the Winnipeg Foundation invested $10-million in 2020 and 2021 to create the Manitoba Trails Strategic Funds. Half of the funding will pay out over the next few years to ‘boost’ the province's trail network, says Tim Coffin, the executive director of Trails Manitoba, which administers the grants. The rest is in endowments designed to fund trail maintenance and improvements in perpetuity. In its first year Trails Manitoba handed out $1.5-million to 41 trail projects, everything from new multi-use paths to maintaining existing trails.
“In the past, trail organizations had to consistently scramble to find funding dollars for projects,” Coffin says. “Now, the province has created a sustainable framework that will ensure consistent trail funding well into the future.”
Pedersen says a BC Trail Fund is one way of providing the same for B.C. trail stewards. A one-time $10-million investment to set up the fund, would provide $350,000, from interest alone, every year. Community groups, First Nations and local governments could use the money to provide ongoing trail stewardship and maintenance projects.
“Governments are responsible for other infrastructure, like roads, pools and parks,” she says. “With COVID we saw how essential outdoor recreation infrastructure is.”
It would be money well spent. A 2020 study out of the University of Saskatchewan found outdoor recreation contributes $15.8-billion to the B.C. economy annually and 2.2 percent of the national GDP. Trails tourism, particularly mountain biking, is making up a growing percentage of that.
Pedersen and her colleagues are due to meet with the province to discuss the BC Trail Fund proposal with the provincial government this fall. In the meantime volunteers are doing their best to keep up with demand for their time and energy, in Pemberton and beyond.
“The pressures are extraordinary,” says Pedersen. “The status quo just is not working.”
Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.
