Sheffield / Peak Crowd Funding

I have very mixed feelings about this. Raising £8,500 is great, telling us that’s not even half of whats required is not cool. It also makes clear that when raising the initial amount in reality Ride Sheffield didn’t really have a budget or agreed plans / permission for the work for which they were raising money.

I gave a modest amount but I like riding in the Peaks and wanted to support the effort even though I live far away. I of course knew there was a risk that insufficient would be raised but here the goal posts have been shifted massively. Not trying to be a hero here, but not giving again. This leaves a bad taste as it seems quite likely that trying to double the amount raised in just 2 months prior to Christmas is gong to prove very difficult. So what happens to the money already raised ?

the original plans were quite modest really, the original target (£8500 from memory?) would have built a lovely little trail. Think of that as a slightly simplified ‘phase 1’ on the new plans.

the original modest plan was fully developed, with quotes, plans, permission, the lot. The new plans / extra phases are just a bit more ambitious; if we can build 1 trail, why not more?

I agree, the original plan looked great and I looked forward to riding that trail sometime. Now they need much more money or there will be nothing, they need another £11.5k to build the first trail.

from teh link:

Originally … we were looking for at least £7,500

(my mistake)

for machine digging, plus a tonne of volunteer work to
put in the trail. Having discussed it further with the Council (the land owner) and having had another year of experience with the trails
at Greno, it is clear that volunteer dug trails just don’t take the hammer of the high usage a facility like this will undoubtedly
attract. The model Sheffield City Council (SCC) want to pursue is professionally constructed, volunteer maintained trails. This results
in much higher quality, more sustainable trails.

if i was feeling uncharitable, i’d say that Sheffield council had moved the goalposts a bit, but i think they’ve got a valid point – these trails will need to be completed/armoured quickly – that won’t happen with volunteer built stuff.

it seems the increase in the bill for phase1 is to pay for the trail to be armoured/surfaced. A pain, but arguably necessary.

(i’ve been out of the loop for a while (got married! 🙂 ))

I fully appreciate people put a lot of time into these efforts and raising £8,500 is great, but the message of another £11,500 before Christmas or no trails in 2014 is an own goal. The run up to Christmas, that time of year when people have lots of spare cash.

For the avoidance of doubt I am particularly grump today, in case STW hand’t noticed.

raise 8.5k dig a wood up so someone can say gerorf our land when it gets really busy and annoying for the landowner = genius if you ask me

its a bit like wharncliffe..got dug up when there was no real need, and now sits crumbling away ..waste of time

i’m more than happy to donate another tenner to the pot…seems a very worthwhile venture to me.

If you build it, they will come !

Ride Sheffield is a fairly new group so learning as it goes along. They are also building upon the experience of Greno Woods and amount of traffic those trails have received.

I’m not familiar with the science of building trails and where the money goes, but I’d like to see an approach of “Let see what money we have in March, and do as much as we can with it”, rather than “we need £x,000 before we can even start”. Once the trail is built and people can see where the money is going, it should be easier to raise the money for phase 2 and 3.

I’ve chucked some more money into the pot. There are enough MTBers in Sheffield that we should be able to get close to the mark.

Cross posting a response I’ve just put on Facebook after similar questions were raised. Hope this helps clear things up. If you’re REALLY that unhappy about the ideas though, we’ll give your money back. If you want to get involved and have your say on the project then come to the social at the Lescar on 19th November at 7.30. There will be an update on Lady Cannings and open Q & A.

Posted on FB as follows……

1) The £8.5k actually arrived pretty quickly, but we have had little more over the summer because we haven’t been in a position to unveil the full plan and keep pushing the funding. Maybe that was our mistake, but we felt we had to wait until we had the full plan before asking for more.

2) It’s not just SCC who want this, although it’s their suggestion as land owner. We’ve seen a massive increase in use on the largely volunteer built trails at Greno this year and they’ve been hammered. A lot of the work Bike Track have done recently is fixing up trails and putting a more machine built surface in to make them sustainable. The other issue for SCC is that they have pretty much no budget to maintain this trail, that all has to be volunteer led. We’re happy to do this but their and our view is that paying more upfront for a more solidly built trail makes it more likely that Ride Sheffield can handle this with dig days without major rebuilding like we’ve seen at Greno. Even Parkwood needed a fair amount of work after the first few months use. The original pitch was for a loop, which would have been around 1.5-2km long. Now we have the new BW as the ‘up’ all the the 1.5km can now be swoopy trail in the down hill direction. And then after that if we raise more money SCC would allow us to get more trails than we ever dreamed of put in. This plan has way more trail than we originally hoped for. Finally, £20k for 1.5km of pro-built trail is actually pretty cheap. A recent What MTB article quoted an average price of £65/m for MTB trail. That would be nearly £100k for our 1.5km sliver of loveliness. To get something solidly professionally built for a fifth of that price is a bargain. If we miss the target by Christmas then the build will have to be put back to Autumn next year and at that point I think we will look at giving people their money back if they don’t want to keep the faith. We hoep that won’t happen. Also worth noting that with the higher target we can now approach more businesses. Before we got caught up in businesses wanting to name the trail for a couple of grand because that was a big slice of the target. We didn’t want to give away naming rights because this is YOUR trail largely funded by YOU LOT. However, if those companies want to get on board with a few hundred quid or a grand they can see that it’s a small percentage of a bigger target so can’t expect so much in return, but may still want to support a great local cause because it’s a good thing to do. Maybe I’m being naive, but I hope not.

The press release seems to suggest that they want to develop it into a mini Centre parks.

There used to be perfectly good trails in Greno, then a load of time & money was spent developing one & now it needs more time & money.

There are a couple of perfectly good trails in Lady cannings, now you want to develop it & want more time & money.

You could leave them alone & focus more on improving the current rights of way which would cost a shed load less & probably support more people across the city but I suppose that isn’t quite so high profile.

oh do cheer up Podge – i know you’re not that grumpy really, wanna hug? 🙂

the ‘perfectly good’ trails in Greno’ were fine when nearly 7 people a week went there.

the ‘perfectly good’ trails in Lady Cannings, are in fact completely shagged, not very long, and on private property it seems, and only ridden by a handful of people.

these are ‘build it and they will come’ projects.

You cant go offering out hugs if you’re married, you’ll get in trouble.

I suppose my point is that Wharncliffe manages to be self sustaining, how come that doesn’t need thousands of pounds to maintain it? Normal trail centres, which this and Parkwood seem to be getting their ideas from are properly funded not built on people’s goodwill.

I know you did a lot on the RoW side of things but where is the action to upgrade any FP that can sustain an increase of cycling? open up the existing network instead of building new stuff which then will require loads of up keep.

The new budget & time scale of this project would put an episode of Grand designs to shame.

I suppose my point is that Wharncliffe manages to be self sustaining, how come that doesn’t need thousands of pounds to maintain it?

self-sustaining? – nah, there’s an army of people digging/building/patching/filling/repairing – they just do it on the sly.

you’re not wrong about my wife though… 🙂

Well ok, self sustaining as in there’s no need to be asking people to raise thousands.

and there won’t be, once the trails at Lady-C are built.

we could wait for small uncoordinated groups to build 5k of peachy, surfaced, well-drained singletrack, but some of us will die of old age before it’s finished.

the ‘perfectly good’ trails in Greno’ were fine when nearly 7 people a week went there.

have you not noticed things only get popular when some one tries to build a **** trail centre the 7 folks going were quite happy then someone dug it up then more folk came

oh then no one could be arsed anymore

im very **** off ill ride where the hell i like orientated

jesus christ if you need to have a trail built for you go and buy a road bike

good for you.

do you mind if the rest of us have a whip-round and build something awesome?

@ Podge – Increasing FP upgrades? What like the one that’s just happened in Lady Cannings to make the main trail a BW with decent drainage which means our trail project can now focus on being purely a downhill direction swoopy slice of joy?

You mean the proposed FP to BW upgrade for the path from Porter Clough over the tip to the corner of Lady C which will link up with project and make the trip from the Parks to Houndlirk almost 100% traffic free and is mentioned in the press release?

You mean the BW upgrade of the Barbrook Valley and Totley Moor already achieved with Eastern Moors partnership?

You mean the propsed concessionary upgrades of the Froggatt at Curbar Edge paths due in the next year to turn that into a great big connected circuit.

Oh yes, Ride Sheffield have done **** all for MTB rights of way. We just dream ideas about building more trails for us to ride. What awful people we are.

Early Cannock Chase Trails built by hand didnt last, even after a good few years experience and using whacker plates etc they dont last. Machine built grant funded professional stuff didnt last long either. Yet more and more people came to ride, I think its about 100,000 a year now who ride round some tree factory style small hills in the West Mids. Bought in crushed rocks are now being put in 50/50 as surfacing, hopefully this will last better and more understanding of effective lasting drainage is being put in at the offset of building.

What works, can be built efficiently and will last takes a while to work out and it can be years of just reworking and maintenance after the first trail is put in.

Yes local ‘better’ cheeky trails have been affected / lost but so be it, go build another with the knowledge you’ve learned attending ‘official’ dig days.

Sheffield has a great bike scene, if you cant donate cash then lend some elbow grease.

Best of luck with it all.

Thanks Scruff. Wise words.

Oh yes, Ride Sheffield have done **** all for MTB rights of way. We just dream ideas about building more trails for us to ride. What awful people we are.

Then you need to advertise these more. As a casual observer RS seem to be (in order of frequency seen) complaining about “vandalism” & not being consulted, asking for time / money for Greno / Lady cannings / Parkwood… and if some one gets your backs up on the internet, the occasional FP upgrade.

And you’ll notice that I said focus MORE on RoW not “done **** all” as you so politely put it.

They DO advertise them – RS very loudly trumpeted (and rightly so) their involvement in getting the Barbrook and Totley Moor bridleway upgrades to fruition. Just because you haven’t been paying attention doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening.

Here you go podge, a bit of bedtime reading….

http://www.ridesheffield.org.uk/2013/11/a-little-light-reading-before-the-winter-social/

…and I’ve probably forgotten loads….