# Professional TRAIL DESIGNER: Services, Cost and Advantages



## snowkraft (Apr 12, 2015)

Hi All, This is my first post on this site. Great to have a resource like this. I'll try to help with items I have knowledge about.

BACKGROUND: I have a XC Ski area, Snowkraft, in Sturgeon Bay, WI. I have approx. 10K XC ski trail on 168 ACRES, (In one approx. 40 acre section, I have about 80 feet of elevation. No, not the Rocky Mountains  Roughly 70 acres have good elevation gradient, the remaining 100 rather flat. Property consists of a mix of hardwood forest, old apple orchard, meadow and pine plantings) and will probably add about 4 km ski trail in the future for a total of 14 km. It is all combo classic/skate, designed wide at about 14 feet average width. 

I have had SINGLETRACK bike trails for about 10 years, (designed by me) but only about 3 miles that was really more for friends and I. I have come to see the potential of also catering to mountain and fat bikers, and I AM ONE. I hosted my first fat bike race, KOLDWAVE I, (21 miles) last winter. I went to college in Gunnison, CO early 90's, Crested Butte and Moab close by. I don't think I need to say more. Well, I do need to mention Dave Wiens is awesome, both as a biker and person.

I am not new to trail design, as I designed all my ski trails and a small amount of bike trail. I think I am relatively good at this, but definitely NOT a professional. I AM a perfectionist; the trails I'd have to say turned out well. HOWEVER, I am now actively designing a goal of 12 miles of singletrack (Trail density 1 mile per 14 acres- 12 miles on 168 acres) and plan to have a pump track as well. This is a BIG PROJECT!! I have marked about 7 miles, with 5 miles to finish. As I start to design the last 5 miles- the hilliest terrain with the most potential- I am thinking more and more that a professional trail designer would do a better job than I could, and would think of factors that would ultimately make my bike trails BETTER, and resultingly derive more income. 

I have a myriad of equipment including a monster steel track skidster (Gehl 7810) and a compact track loader, ASV PT 80. I also have 2 dump trucks, 2 tree spades, (I planted over 600 10 feet and taller pines and spruce for windbreaks which I was able to get FREE!!) brush grapples, tree grapples, all sorts of buckets and other attachments. What I am getting at is I have the equipment and general experience to BUILD some of the more accessible trail and pump track. I realize I need MTB trail specific machinery, and plan to buy a Kubota or Volvo mini-excavator and motorized track hauler, as would like to add banked corners and stone features. 

I have some QUESTIONS that I hope can be answered. As I mentioned, I think a professional could do a better job designing trails than me. I plan to have all 12 miles of trail marked in a few days. What I would like is for a trail design professional to come and take a look at what I have designed and suggest improvements, or, worst case scenario, tell me that everything I marked should be redesigned. I am wondering WHERE TO START IN SEARCH OF A WILDLY TALENTED TRAIL DESIGN EXPERT, and would like to get a rough idea of what an expert would charge for DESIGN CONSULTATION based on 12 miles of trail with pump track in fairly easy to work with terrain. Also, I will need some EXCAVATOR TRAINING and MTB TRAIL BUILDING skills tutelage. I believe I have the ability to CONSTRUCT the trail myself, so looking for DESIGN help only.

I am guessing I would be unlikely to find an available professional to review my trail design in the time before tree leaves are out, (about April 25) so guessing I would have to wait until fall to work with someone, correct??

Please let me know what you think. If you are a trail design professional please do not hesitate to PM me. thanks, ...tom


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## Coldfriction (Oct 31, 2009)

Troll harder. But here your go just because I'm a nice guy. World Class Bike Park Design, Development, and Construction Home or maybe just use anyone who's a member of PTBA

Edit: I looked at your post history and regret calling you a troll, my apologies.


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## Cotharyus (Jun 21, 2012)

Yeah. I'd dig up someone who's a PTBA member - I could name drop several fine choices, but someone near you would probably work out best, and I can't claim to know anyone in WI. So here's the deal:

A PTBA will be happy to collect some funds from you to look at your trail design, and help you tweak things. It's a huge part of what they do. I've seen more than one case where one company designs a trail, and another company builds it, simply because of time commitments on the part of each company, so just doing a design leg is not unusual.

You can also pay a PTBA member to come train you on running a machine to build trail. I've heard of this happening before, and don't know for sure that ANY PTBA member would do it, but I know at least two will, so I assume more would. Two days of instruction from a good operator should have you up to speed enough to knock out what you're talking about, but it will take operating hours to really get good with the machine.


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## snowkraft (Apr 12, 2015)

Thanks for the wealth of info Cotharyus!! I suppose it does make sense to look for someone in my area, as they most likely work more with less hilly areas like I have. I did not know a PTBA would train me on an excavator. That is good to know. Also glad to know they are fine to look at design only. 

A question I have is how much this would cost, approximately, based on 12 miles of trail. Do most designers work on a per hour basis, or could I expect a quote?? ..thanks for your help, tom


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## Coldfriction (Oct 31, 2009)

They should be able to quote you a $/unit length estimate if you can describe the trail clearly enough that they can match it to work they've already done. It will be difficult for them if all they have is a total length. Laying out a simple single track trail is pretty cheap if there is no clearing or major earthwork to be done. They'll need to know the natural grades to know how much bench cutting they are doing, if any. They will also need to know whether or not they will be clearing and grubbing, meaning removing trees and vegetation. Large berms take time, whereas corners that aren't any different from the regular trail won't cost them any more than the regular trail to construct. If you have poor soils that are too clayey, too silty, to gravelly, etc. some soil improvement might be worth looking into. If there are any retaining structures or bridges, they may add a lot to the cost.

The point I'm getting at is that the more certain you are of what you want and what you already have, the more precise any estimate is going to be. All the contractors I've ever worked with adjust their bids up the less precise the plans they are bidding on are. There's a photo circulated around the construction industry that has a dingey labelled "contract" and a yacht next to it labelled "change order." So if you haven't really figured out what you want before you start, know it'll probably cost more to change after the fact if you have someone else do the work.

When I've tried to research the cost of building a trail, I found wildly varying figures. Some trail was $10,000 a mile, some was a LOT more. There is a huge difference between cutting a stone mountain with hammers and blasting to simply using a rake and a shovel to clear 12 inches of soil. Because of this, you might be better off deciding how much you have to spend and seeing what that could get you.

The only thing I will say with a certainty is that you're best off finding someone as local as possible to come assess the site if you're wanting to source a design and construction person/company. Contractors charge for mobilization, meaning the farther they are away the more they'll charge.

I'm not involved in the actual trail building industry, but I am involved in design work that is contracted out and have worked in project management on some very high dollar construction projects. What I recommend doing may not actually be doable for you because trail design and building might be too niche. If you want the absolute best product you should do the following:

Ideally get a good survey of where you want the trail. I don't know how much this will cost you but it probably won't be very cheap. In fact, it could blow half your budget. There are modern surveying technologies such as LIDAR where a surveyor can set up a base station and gather hundreds of thousands or millions of points of information in a matter of an hour. That information has to be sorted and cleaned in an office, so it does cost a little bit, but it's not as expensive as paying a surveyor to shoot the natural ground and each tree with a rod and total station. I don't know if there is a surveyor near you that can do it. The place I work does do it so I know it's out there. There's one major advantage to doing this, you can source a designer from anywhere in the world and they don't have to visit your property to lay out a great design. You don't need to do this in my opinion and I don't think it'd be worth your money unless you're a big commercial ski resort, which it doesn't appear you are.

Find a designer. If you don't survey the land independently, they might do it as part of their design process, but this means they have to be somewhat local. Any and all designers would probably prefer to do the survey themselves because they know what data they want to design with. We send surveying crews back out for additional information all the time, so you're initial expensive survey might not be good enough if you don't have the designer do it.

The product of the designer is the planset used for construction. The reason you want a set of plans is that when you distribute them for bidding, every contractor is bidding against each other on the exact same thing. They are legally bound to construct to those plans if they are awarded the contract. The designer has the best design in their interest as they work for you, not the contractor. They don't care how much the construction costs end up being because it's not their money paying for it. The plans will probably won't be perfect and without error, expect to be asked to clarify what you want by the contractor frequently if they are a decent contractor.

The designer should be able to give you a tabulated bit item list with unit costs for everything required to build the project. It will be the Engineer's Estimate and not the actual price charged by the contractor. You won't know what the actual cost per unit of anything actually will be until you open the bids and see what the contractor is asking for. In the work I do nobody actually knows if they are going to build the project until they have some sort of estimate. You may be able to ask a designer to do a preliminary design and estimate to help you know whether or not you have the budget to finish the design and build the project. The company I work for does a lot of preliminary designs that get shelved at 30% completion waiting for the day someone decides they want to pay more money to finish them.

Pick a contractor that has done the sort of work you're looking for before. I linked PTBA because that gives you some assurance that it won't be the first time the contractor has built a trail. They are an organization meant to keep standards high among their members. PTBA may not be the only place you can look though. If there are city trails and parks nearby that have trails similar to what you want, ask who built them.

Don't trust the contractor to build to plan. I know contractors hate it when people like me say this, but they are there to make money, just like everyone with their respective work. Inspect what they are doing frequently. Make sure the designer explains the plans to you well enough that you can hold the contractor to them. If you really can't understand the plans, you can find someone who does to represent you. If the contractor looks like they are trying to cheapen out for any reason on any part of the plan, don't let them. Allow changes if you truly desire them, but be sure the contractor isn't trying to make a dime by changing what they bid on. Don't let the contractor decide when they are done with the job. They are under contract with you to deliver what is in the plan; you decide when it has been delivered.

If you don't feel like you have the time to manage all of the above, you can hire a project manager to do absolutely everything for you, except write the checks.

While the above might get you close to the best trail system you could every hope to have, it will not be cheap. The above is how a large public works project is conducted, such as the interstate systems I design.

Here is what I would do if I were you. You have the equipment to build the trails, so consider yourself a general contractor in the scenario above. You should probably find a local designer that has enough experience to simply walk your property and give you an estimate per unit length. I would probably go with yards of trail instead of miles because if you change your design you probably aren't going to change it by a mile at a time so it'll help you budget if you keep the units reasonable. If they only use miles of trail for estimates you have to go to the fourth decimal to be as accurate as if you were to use yards (I don't know why, but accountants like whole number changes and not fractional number changes on a contract). A designer that is not local won't have a clue what local rates for anything are and their estimate will probably not be as accurate as a local designer's would be.

I would use the designer's design and build it myself. By build it myself, I actually do mean build it myself, but in your case "myself" could mean hiring some equipment operators to do the work with your equipment, or sub-contracting (because you're calling yourself the general contractor) whatever you want done from local contractors that have earth moving experience and pay per hour rates. There should be plenty of those around. You then have to be sure they build as much to plan as you want and are properly trained to use your equipment. The one big problem I see here is liability insurance for the construction. Be sure you have the construction of the project properly insured, or the contractor you use is properly insured for the activity. You don't want to lose everything you have because some guy gets killed or maimed using your equipment on your land building your project. That is a good reason to do it yourself with the help of family and friends if you can. I have no idea what insurance would cost for this sort of thing.

Hiring a PTBA member that can help you do the design and train you to do the work with your own equipment is the best idea here. It appears there are several clubs/chapters associated with IMBA in WI that could be a major help to you from the beginning to the end of this project. You'll have to contact them yourself, but there is a list here: https://www.imba.com/near-you/clubs

Don't let everything I just said scare you; you will probably find building your course is much easier and simpler than I just made it seem. I overthink almost everything (which is why I do what I do for a living). I would come look over your property just for fun if I were local and give any free advice I could (you get what you pay for however). I did look it up on Google Earth, but your tree cover makes it hard to see what's there besides trees, and in your case you'll want something better than a simple layout from Google Earth that I would do for you freely. You are awesome for adding trails to the world. I really am sorry I called you a troll; your post landed right at the wrong time for me.

Edited because I post from my phone and produce garbage when I do so. I didn't write this wall of text from my phone. I actually got up and went to the computer after I realized how long it was getting, but I still didn't properly proof read it until after posting.


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## Coldfriction (Oct 31, 2009)

Also, as far as your timing goes, I don't quite know why you would wait until the fall unless you have to have what is currently there open during the year. I would treat it like a roadway project and reroute the riders around the construction area, but be sure to fence anything that could be a liability. Rerouting takes time, money, and impacts ground you may not want to touch, but it keeps your construction ongoing.


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## Coldfriction (Oct 31, 2009)

After losing sleep writing that wall of text, I laid in bed and realized I didn't even answer your question. I tried to wait until tomorrow to correct the error but my mind wouldn't let me.

A designer should be able to give you an estimate for the design cost very cheaply or even free. Typically design costs are a percentage of construction costs. 7-9% seem to be the norm where I am for the work I do. So how do you know what that percentage should be before any design has been done? Chicken and the egg problem right there. The solution the transportation departments usually use is to find a designer to do a preliminary design with a different type of contract that pays either a flat fee or an professional hourly rate. The final design is often a different company. Where I work doesn't charge per mile of road designed. I'm unaware of any designer that charges per unit of anything whether they be a landscape architectural firm, transportation firm, house architect, etc. It may be different in mechanical design or electrical design however. It's really easy to draw twelve miles of a trail on a plansheet with your property borders.

If you find a local designer, it should be very cheap or free depending on how hungry they are for work. If you were to bring someone in from elsewhere I would expect them to charge you more for their time and the trip.

Lee Likes Bikes has some pumptrack designs, and apparently custom designs start around $500, so I would expect non-custom to be cheaper. I could take a 3d pumptrack model, create a survey surface from that in CAD, and then build it in the field fairly precisely, but that's expensive and I'm nowhere near you and don't personally own the survey equipment. There might be a small engineering company around that would do that for you cheaply, but I see some serious complications for them. They would be able to stake it out and tell you how to interpret the stakes, but with the varying curves and grades it would be difficult to stake enough points to correctly define the surface feasibly. You'd want the survey gear handy all the time as you were building to constantly check and recheck your work. The website above probably has some pretty good ideas on how to build their designs using simpler methods than I am accustom to.


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## Cotharyus (Jun 21, 2012)

A professional designer is going to want to look at a good map of the area that you've marked up a little indicating very general things - trail heads, area that can be used, stuff you'd like to stay away from, etc - and give you an estimate on designing something like you want. All the better if you have a PDF of the map marked up. As long as there's a scale, some indication of topography, and a good general notion of what you're looking for, that should give you an estimate for designing and building something.


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## Coldfriction (Oct 31, 2009)

Cotharyus is correct. I had an idea of what I might do if I were you on the way to work. Call a few local Landscape Architect companies. Ask if they have experience with the kind of trail you want or know anyone who does. Ask what they would charge for a preliminary assessment. City park and rec departments use them, forest services use them, but the trails they'd likely have experience with are probably more comparable to an unpaved sidewalk. Find one that likes to mountain bike and you could get a great design. Even if they don't have trail experience, they are the professional discipline that most applies here and they can help you figure costs better than anyone. I also guarantee there are a few close to you.


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## HypNoTic (Jan 30, 2007)

Virtually all the good builders are booked at this time of the year. You might be lucky by sending a Project Request on the PTBA website (which will be distributed to all the membership, myself included) and maybe someone might be able to help you in short notice.

You already got a ton of excellent information here from Coldfriction. 

Check out Trailbuilders.org


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## bikePalmer (Oct 26, 2013)

PM Sent. Give me a ring or send me an email.


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