View Full Version : Trail building average costs--not just the AT
Different Socks
04-16-2014, 19:37
Anybody can point me in the right direction to answer this question?
upstream
04-17-2014, 08:08
I was shocked to find out a local government had paid $1 million per mile for a low maintenance multi use trail, and started researching that. Turns out that is high, but isn't that unusual.
Low use, high maintenance foot travel only trail should be significantly less.
There's plenty of foot trail in north Georgia that's being abandoned because of lack of resources for maintenance.
Here is one reference for starters:
http://www.americantrails.org/resources/ManageMaintain/MilwMaintcost.html
and another:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448293/
A lot depends on the planned usage and level of use you plan for.
The Old Boot
04-17-2014, 08:50
Anybody can point me in the right direction to answer this question?
That depends entirely on who is building the trail.
A local town here just put in brand new day use trails (doesn't lead anywhere, isn't connected.) They did it with contracted help. Cost...exhorbitant when you include engineers, town planners, construction crews, etc. etc.
OTOH, we, as a volunteer group, using high school students who get community service hours for their help have spent less than a $100.00 over 2 years completely revamping a trail that you needed to be a mountain goat to climb before the redesign. We put in rock work to prevent motorized traffic, which is a problem here. Then we started realigning trail utilizing as much of the old trail as was feasible. As we completed each new section the old section was closed off and restored to a natural state. The $100.00 was for refreshments for the high school students. The only other cost we encountered was buying tools, flagging tape and flagging pins. The pins are recycled for new trail work.
The Solemates
04-17-2014, 09:21
metro memphis tn and surrounding towns has paid about $1M per mile for their 30-40+ miles of paved greenline bike/run trails they've built in the last few years. they spend about $2M per year just to manage and maintain the most-used 7 mile stretch.
This varies so much based on what and where the trail is, who is doing it, whether land acquisition, engineers, lawyers, etc. are included, and so on.
peakbagger
04-17-2014, 17:04
Permitting is also an major unknown. On federal land it is pretty extensive with multiple studies. I think a lot of the 1M per mile trails are rail trails that need to be excavated and filled with stone stone dust large structures like bridges and culverts. There are professional who build trails. Carl Demrow in VT is one of them
It's an interesting question --- almost wonder why the OP wants to know. I'm thinking those who know would be ATC or one of its supporting orgs, eg. PATC, MATC, AMC, et. al.
"Land acquisition" would be a separate budget and in any case I think the AT is now close to 100% publicly owned. I think a big chunk of the cost would come from the extraordinary procedures required to bring in heavy, bulky materials and machinery. I've seen photos of a pre-built shelter being helicoptered in. I've seen materials carried in by mule to a shelter in the Smokies. Costs like that might vary wildly from shelter to shelter.
Different Socks
04-17-2014, 21:55
It's an interesting question --- almost wonder why the OP wants to know. I'm thinking those who know would be ATC or one of its supporting orgs, eg. PATC, MATC, AMC, et. al.
Call it curiosity.
Alligator
04-18-2014, 10:02
Call it curiosity.
Can you narrow down your interest? The variability is likely very wide. It's like if you said how much does the average road cost.
A lot of trail gets built with volunteers too. Their time may not have a dollar value associated with it.
Maintenance on the PCT takes so much work. I can't imagine trying to build it without explosives and motorized equipment. I've never seen freshly built trail though, so I don't know what it looked like. I'm sure the trail was improved by trail maintainers. Well, I know it has been because I've helped improve it by installing features that will last for a very long time. It's hard to factor that in though.
This question really highlights the very unique nature of the AT, as a public/private venture. There have been some major legal battles fought in order to move the AT from private to public ownership. Those battles may be subsiding now that the battle is mostly won. I'm sure the gov't. spent lots of $$ on lawyers and payouts to the landowners. But the day-to-day maintenance operations on the AT are almost entirely done by volunteers.
Occasionally there are some big construction projects and upgrades, eg. the James River foot bridge, or the boardwalk through the marsh near Vernon, NJ, and so on. I have no idea how those get funded.
Probably a good guess that whenever a road-walk gets turned back into a woods or marsh walk, there's a fair amount of $$ involved.
Little known fact, the very existence (or rather, the imminent completion) of the Bear Mountain Bridge may have sparked the AT's beginning. The bridge was built by a private consortium, but Benton MacKaye had connections among the New York City elite, and worked those connections hard. I cite this mainly as an example of a large private capital investment related to the AT.
Pedaling Fool
04-18-2014, 11:16
I don't consider MUPs trails, such as the Great Allegheny Passage, C&O canal, East Coast Greenway...
They are just two different things and you can not compare costs in building a MUP to that of a trail. However, I also realize that the cost to build a trail can be, in certain areas, a totally different venture than other areas, as to be totally non-compatible in comparison.
Very often I'll be talking to someone and they'll say something along the lines of the AT being an "old Indian footpath", or old time wagon routes, or something like that.
A lot of people don't know that it's a modern times project.
Ox97GaMe
04-18-2014, 21:06
There are a lot of variables that go into calculating the cost of building and maintaining the AT. Here are some of the variables that we deal with in the southern region....
- remoteness of the trail section (close to road vs. middle of GSMNP)
- type of terrain (flat, hilly, mountainous)
- materials needed (logs, rocks, treated materials)
- type of crew performing the maintenance (all volunteer, volunteer led by paid crew leader, fully paid crew)
- number of structures required along the section (shelter, privy, bridges, boardwalks)
The ATC gets funding from a lot of different sources each year and is supplemented by tens of thousands of volunteer labor
- Department of Interior
- AT Park Office and Regional offices
- National Parks and affiliated organizations (Friends of Smokies, Smoky Mountain association, etc)
- Local maintaining clubs
- private donations
Also to note, every mile of trail is different. The best you would be able to do is come up with some broad estimates. No matter what number someone states, there will be others that will have sufficient data for a section that they know which contradicts the original number.
A good place to start for some general numbers would be the ATC headquarters in Harpers Ferry.
Patrickjd9
04-21-2014, 19:08
We used 1000 labor hours a mile for building AT sidehill through rough terrain, but no serious ups or downs, when I was doing it in the 80s. I think trail standards have increased since then, and the figure is probably low today.
SunnyWalker
04-21-2014, 22:08
Different Socks: knowing the Forest Service/Nat'l Park service there is going to be a report generated somewhere on the amt of volunteer hours they have been the recipient of. Enclosed with that will be the equivalent amt of saved dollars and then real dollars. As a recent retiree from the State I can about bet you'll find this. This will get yo started. Go to their websites, etc.
The Solemates
04-22-2014, 12:51
There are a lot of variables that go into calculating the cost of building and maintaining the AT. Here are some of the variables that we deal with in the southern region....
- remoteness of the trail section (close to road vs. middle of GSMNP)
- type of terrain (flat, hilly, mountainous)
- materials needed (logs, rocks, treated materials)
- type of crew performing the maintenance (all volunteer, volunteer led by paid crew leader, fully paid crew)
- number of structures required along the section (shelter, privy, bridges, boardwalks)
The ATC gets funding from a lot of different sources each year and is supplemented by tens of thousands of volunteer labor
- Department of Interior
- AT Park Office and Regional offices
- National Parks and affiliated organizations (Friends of Smokies, Smoky Mountain association, etc)
- Local maintaining clubs
- private donations
Also to note, every mile of trail is different. The best you would be able to do is come up with some broad estimates. No matter what number someone states, there will be others that will have sufficient data for a section that they know which contradicts the original number.
A good place to start for some general numbers would be the ATC headquarters in Harpers Ferry.
Did I meet you 6 weeks ago at Derrick Knob shelter? Are you the maintainer for that section?