Study Shows $7.8 Million Economic Impact of Mountain Bike Trails
A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin River Falls Research Center (UW-RFRC) and Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association (CAMBA) has shown that mountain bike trails brought $7.8 million a year to Bayfield and Sawyer Counties in Northwest Wisconsin.
The $7.8 million can be broken down into $2.3 million in labor income, $3.2 million in total value and the generation of 118 jobs. On average, each non-local visitor to the trails expected to pay $200 per day during their visit, and spending in restaurants, hotels and motels alone accounted for $1.8 million.
Some other statistics that we noticed in the report include the fact that nearly three-quarters of respondents travelled to the area to ride the trails and the typical non-local user of the trails stays in the area for two nights during their visit. The study reported that 2/3rds of the trail users were men, a majority (56%) were 45 or over and 61% had a six-figure household income.
Conducted over the summer of 2019 and winter of 2020, the study used a combination of trailside interviews, online surveys and infrared cameras to determine the behavior of mountain bikers that visited the trails.
A table showing where jobs have been generated because of mountain biking
A table showing the typical expenses of a visitor to the area that mountain biked.
CAMBA volunteers administered a brief in-person survey that queried riders on their general impressions of the CAMBA trails, likes and dislikes, riding habits and preferences, and personal expenditures during their visit to the CAMBA trails. Survey participants were also asked if they would be interested in taking a more detailed online survey as a follow-up to the initial interview. This data was then added to and factored with the intercept survey data. Paper and online surveys were forwarded to the UW-RF Research Center where they were tabulated and analyzed.
The other principal component of the study was accumulating trail use data. This was accomplished by installing infrared trail counters at 12 locations throughout the CAMBA system. Counts were collected on a regular basis and tabulated at the end of the season. Trail use for the 2019 season totalled over 38,000 riders.
Ron Bergin, CAMBA executive director, said: “The total economic impact of mountain biking and other non-motorized sports in the region has always been elusive. The amount of time and work it takes to do this in a statistically valid manner is challenging. We decided to tackle this head-on and do it right. Working with David Trechter and Shelly Hadley at the UW-RF Research Center has been extremely positive and fruitful; their guidance and advice have been critical to the success of this project.”
It's great to see some more evidence of the positive impacts of mountain biking and hopefully this data can be used to justify the creation of more trails in future.
The full report can be read, here.
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Then there will be less people sick, less heart attacks, less diabetes, less fat people. This all will reduce income to doctors, hospitals, and, most pronounced, farmaceutical industry.
Can you imagine a world where less people depend on these things? I am certainly doing my part for this to happen!
Adding a trail network will only have positive impacts on the community! As well as more people will travel into the community to put more money back into the economy annually, providing more and more growth, not a reduction. Just looking at it from a holistic approach, not just a mountain bikers view.
I'm not so sure MTB tourism (or tourism in general) is all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the numbers look nice. Yes, it brings in revenue for municipalities via sales and lodging tax. But, at least here in Fruita, CO, I don't see how that translates into better city infrastructure, amenities, or even more trails. The only new build we've had in years is the Palisade Plunge, which will be great, but it's largely funded by state grants. We're seeing more and more MTB traffic every year, with both a local and trail infrastructure not keeping up. Anyone who has been to Moab recently and sat in the bumper to bumper traffic can vouch for what can happen. This is, in my opinion, an overall negative effect for locals. We don't see an improvement in our community/lifestyle and in turn just get road and trail congestion.
Secondly, yes, it can bring in more jobs. However those jobs are largely lower-paying service industry jobs: restaurant staff, hotel, bike shop, baristas, bartenders. As tourism increases, real estate tends to follow and these employees find themselves pinched to live in the place they work and moved to for the MTB lifestyle.
I used to wave the tourism flag pretty hard, but 20 years in Colorado has me changing my mind. Be careful with "if you build it, they will come"....
Especially as more and more people are able to work remotely.
For a place like that any job would be a good job haha.
You raise some fair points and I am curious what you feel the other options could be
You mention sales and lodging tax - add to this the money injected into small businesses such as restaurants, bike shops, breweries, cafes, privately run accommodations. I’m sure the “lower-paying service industry jobs” workers see great benefit from the tourism dollars being injected into their communities. There is a correlation between tourism and higher real estate prices but the alternative is what?.. No visitors and no money being injected into town meaning less jobs, lower wages but cheaper housing!?
The issue that you see in Fruita of tourism dollars not translating into better city infrastructure probably has nothing to do with where the money is coming from but more so how the money is spent by, (and the priorities of) your local government.
I've been riding the CAMBA trails since the mid-90's and it's always been a fishing tourism base.
But hey, get ready for more braided trails, trash everywhere, and more user conflicts! As long as those sweet tourism dollars keep rolling in.
As to the braided trails, trash and user conflicts, most of the Midwest, but especially the Upper Midwest, have land managers that require certain standards for the trails. Typically (and this a very broad brush) there is an annual inspection of the trails and a "to-do" list during the summer for trail maintenance crews. On top of that most trails don't allow horses and the majority of trails in the Upper Midwest are directional.
The quality of Upper MI, WI & MN trails is pretty dang good.
One small nit is that you used the term Principal Component in this line "The other principal component of the study was accumulating trail use data." Principal components and data are already intrinsically linked through the Singular Value Decomposition that is the back-bone of many popular and important clustering algorithms. Not sure if that was the connection you were drawing, but almost asked what did the other Principal Components say and what were you attempting to explain with it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis
Santa Cruz has some great trails and a growing network. It took them years, but I think they have turned a corner. Marin can't get out of it's own way. Baby Boomers that are members of "Footpeople" tend to be an issue from what I hear.
I would gladly pay $300+/year or more to ride on my local trails if they made it more accessible for bikes.
On a positive note, we are absolutely loving Bentonville. The whole NWA area is sprouting trails like weeds, the town of Bentonville and the surround areas are very bike friendly (bike lanes, bike racks, trails, etc. etc.), I am actually riding more now that in Denver since I can ride to 40+ miles of trails from my garage and within a 10-20 min drive even more...
Hopefully you guys can get the East Bay going strong for MTB soon enough. Cheers man.
There is good potential for riding in almost every state, the big issues become if there is too much private land versus public space. I feel like that’s CA biggest issue.
I feel like it’s kinda like legalizing weed, if everywhere did it, you wouldn’t have people vacationing or moving just to the areas that did for it.
I’m glad to see CO towns like Trinidad finally capitalizing on their outdoor spaces to attract new residents and visitors.
Mt. Diablo is right out my front door (I'm in Clayton) and pre-pandemic used to be able to get away with a lot more, it was mostly empty and pretty cool people. But now mobs of masked hikers that act like they've never seen a dude on a bike before have taken over.
Can't wait for the malls to open back up.
"Induced effects are the results of increased personal income caused by the direct and indirect effects. Businesses experiencing increased revenue from the direct and indirect effects will subsequently increase payroll expenditures (by hiring more employees, increasing payroll hours, raising salaries, etc.). Households will, in turn, increase spending at local businesses. The induced effect is a measure of this increase in household-to-business activity."
Is there an economics major that can explain how this is measured? I envision a bunch of accountants in a room at typewriters aggregating spending.
Also, and this is an important point here, is that many of these towns with big networks are TINY. Cable has a population under 900 people. So even "blue collar" riders just spending the night and getting a beer have economic benefit. That is the thing to remember. A hundred people visiting and spending $10 is $1000 you didn't have before. When hundreds of thousand visit in a year, spending far more than $10, it adds up.
Long-term these trails do more than get visitors, they bring young people into these small towns and make them more diverse, which helps them economically in other ways.
Class act org, way ahead of the curve when it comes to building a community around a trail system.
When Canadian borders open (it doesn't look very soon), foreign MTB traffic will pick up again.
Dang, how much you guys get paid over there. $200 is the price of a race weekend including fuel and entry over here.
Reference source - I'm one of the trail builders that runs a trail org sometimes scrambling for funds....