But biking groups said they wanted to see dedicated tracks to support the sport’s booming popularity and help reduce the number of illegal tracks in parklands.

At present, mountain bikers only have 31 kilometres of heavily used trails at Mount Coot-tha within the Brisbane City Council area.

Under the finalised plan, the council plans to introduce a variety of skills tracks, dirt jumps, pump tracks, single trails, cyclo-cross circuits and shared cycling on fire trails across the city.

“These off-road cycling opportunities will be progressed on an annual rolling program,” the council’s final strategy says.

Brisbane Off-Road Riders Alliance released a statement in December welcoming the strategy, noting some of the parks listed had been used “informally” for years.

“While we don’t condone unauthorised trail building, we hope that council recognises that building a good relationship with the local riders of the area is key to building effective community stewardship with strong sustainability outcomes,” the alliance said.

Shortly before the strategy was released, Brisbane Bushland Alliance representative Christine Hosking addressed the council saying the group of environmentalists were concerned about the impacts of opening bushland reserves to mountain biking.

“Toohey Forest, for example, is a bushland reserve designated in the strategy for mountain bike single trails, but the soils in Toohey are very poor and unstable,” Dr Hosking said.

“The forest is still recovering from being cleared decades ago. It has a large and growing koala population, and while koalas can tolerate humans more than some other species, it is not that simple.”

Key points

• Brisbane City Council has earmarked dozens of bush reserves and parks for off-road cycling facilities
• Some projects will be delivered over five years and others later
• Environmentalists are concerned about the impacts, but cyclists have welcomed the move

Source
Lucy Stone
ABC News