I built an App to help you Advocate

Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
Edited Date/Time 1/16/2023 10:10am

My local trails want to expand with some aspirational additions/features and we needed funding. So, to help us argue our case to city/state and local businesses, I built https://app.mn-mtb.com/ to build some easy to understand analysis of any trail/region.

I'd love to get your input on what you like/dislike, would want to see added, or anything else.

Edit #1:

You all ROCK! Thanks for the comments and advice. I've cleaned a few things up and added an about page to make it a bit easier to understand where I am getting my numbers and how I am calculating the estimates from both a RideCount and Revenue perspective. I'll keep building new things here so, keep sending asks/requests/critiques!

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Losifer
Posts
356
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9/12/2017
Location
Sandia Park, NM US
Fantasy
1774th
1/11/2023 2:47pm

Dude... this is really good work! If you don't mind, I'd like to show this to the rest of our board of the Albuquerque Mountain Biking Association. I think with the number of states that now have outdoor recreation divisions in their economic development departments, this could definitely help local advocacy groups!

Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
1/11/2023 3:16pm
Losifer wrote:
Dude... this is really good work! If you don't mind, I'd like to show this to the rest of our board of the Albuquerque Mountain Biking...

Dude... this is really good work! If you don't mind, I'd like to show this to the rest of our board of the Albuquerque Mountain Biking Association. I think with the number of states that now have outdoor recreation divisions in their economic development departments, this could definitely help local advocacy groups!

Share away!!! This is exactly why I built it! 

2
dolface
Posts
1233
Joined
10/26/2015
Location
CA US
Fantasy
610th
1/11/2023 3:29pm

Holy cow, this is rad! I'm going to start sharing this out and maybe @sspomer can add this to the front page (or signal-boost somehow)?

 

Thank you!

1
sspomer
Posts
4886
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6/26/2009
Location
Boise, ID US
Fantasy
66th
1/11/2023 4:55pm

really cool! homepaging now

Screen Shot 2023-01-11 at 5.54.39 PM.png?VersionId=f

 

5
jimmypop
Posts
146
Joined
9/4/2013
Location
GU US
1/11/2023 6:47pm

Nice work.

How much impact does increased use of Trailforks since 2015 have on the data? That's far from a constant.

fartsack
Posts
92
Joined
10/13/2021
Location
咸興市 KP
Fantasy
2173rd
1/12/2023 5:09am Edited Date/Time 1/12/2023 5:18am

great work, hats off! Could really see it helping local communities!

working in a swiss mountain resort as a product manager for mountain bike myself i'm wondering on what do you calculate in as revenue?

If you count in: travel, lift, food, accomodation, generel spendings, local taxes etc. the numbers seem to be quite low. i know switzerland is known fo having everything made of gold and being expensive. On average a biker spends around 150 bucks a day. this is the revenue for the resort of course and not just the liftcompany itself.

 

Also wondering: As recording and downloads of recording apps are still rocketing, your graph will show more riders every year which is not entirly true. it would be cool to level out this rising number of new downloads or to find a number of "what's the % that is actually tracking" so you could calculate the numbers up to the approx. real facts.

For example: we had about the same number of riders in 2022 as in 2021. According to your stats it would be 33% more. In this ceas means: there were a lot more people using tracking devices than in 21. the dark number is still super high tough. 

Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
1/12/2023 5:13am
fartsack wrote:
great work, hats off! Could really see it helping local communities! working in a swiss mountain resort as a product manager for mountain bike myself i'm...

great work, hats off! Could really see it helping local communities!

working in a swiss mountain resort as a product manager for mountain bike myself i'm wondering on what do you calculate in as revenue?

If you count in: travel, lift, food, accomodation, generel spendings, local taxes etc. the numbers seem to be quite low. i know switzerland is known fo having everything made of gold and being expensive. On average a biker spends around 150 bucks a day. this is the revenue for the resort of course and not just the liftcompany itself.

 

Also wondering: As recording and downloads of recording apps are still rocketing, your graph will show more riders every year which is not entirly true. it would be cool to level out this rising number of new downloads or to find a number of "what's the % that is actually tracking" so you could calculate the numbers up to the approx. real facts.

For example: we had about the same number of riders in 2022 as in 2021. According to your stats it would be 33% more. In this ceas means: there were a lot more people using tracking devices than in 21. the dark number is still super high tough. 

I did a survey in which I asked what the riders  spend was. I think what I need to do is allow users to change this dynamically since every region is very different. For example, my local trail system is a 5 mile XC track and average spend is low but a bike park, like you said, can be ~$150/day. 
 

I’ll make that change.

1
Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
1/12/2023 5:17am Edited Date/Time 1/12/2023 5:18am
jimmypop wrote:

Nice work.

How much impact does increased use of Trailforks since 2015 have on the data? That's far from a constant.

Trailforks only shows a small minority of actual rides. To compensate for this, I did a survey and asked 1.) do you log your rides and 2.) if you do, how do you log them.

turns out, Trailforks only accounted for ~20% of all rides. I’ve factored this in to my calculations to give a more accurate number. You can see the survey data here: https://dashboards.mn-mtb.com

2
1/12/2023 6:39am
jimmypop wrote:

Nice work.

How much impact does increased use of Trailforks since 2015 have on the data? That's far from a constant.

Faust wrote:
Trailforks only shows a small minority of actual rides. To compensate for this, I did a survey and asked 1.) do you log your rides and...

Trailforks only shows a small minority of actual rides. To compensate for this, I did a survey and asked 1.) do you log your rides and 2.) if you do, how do you log them.

turns out, Trailforks only accounted for ~20% of all rides. I’ve factored this in to my calculations to give a more accurate number. You can see the survey data here: https://dashboards.mn-mtb.com

Brilliant work...thank you so much for sharing this

2
jimmypop
Posts
146
Joined
9/4/2013
Location
GU US
1/12/2023 9:05am
jimmypop wrote:

Nice work.

How much impact does increased use of Trailforks since 2015 have on the data? That's far from a constant.

Faust wrote:
Trailforks only shows a small minority of actual rides. To compensate for this, I did a survey and asked 1.) do you log your rides and...

Trailforks only shows a small minority of actual rides. To compensate for this, I did a survey and asked 1.) do you log your rides and 2.) if you do, how do you log them.

turns out, Trailforks only accounted for ~20% of all rides. I’ve factored this in to my calculations to give a more accurate number. You can see the survey data here: https://dashboards.mn-mtb.com

No way - awesome work! I'll add my thanks as well.

1/12/2023 9:09am

Amazing work! There is an area in Eagle Mountain, UT  where they are looking at developing land that will eliminate about 50% of the MTB trails that have been around for 10+ years. I've shared the tool to the groups who are helping to protect this amazing recreation space. Thank you!

1
Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
1/12/2023 9:44am
Amazing work! There is an area in Eagle Mountain, UT  where they are looking at developing land that will eliminate about 50% of the MTB trails...

Amazing work! There is an area in Eagle Mountain, UT  where they are looking at developing land that will eliminate about 50% of the MTB trails that have been around for 10+ years. I've shared the tool to the groups who are helping to protect this amazing recreation space. Thank you!

Awesome!! I’m really hoping this helps! Sorry to hear this BTW, that’s a huge bummer. 

Mr. P
Posts
64
Joined
5/8/2010
Location
Rocklin, CA US
1/12/2023 2:26pm Edited Date/Time 1/12/2023 2:50pm

This is awesome, great work! Showing numbers on trails is very valuable for advocacy. 

Can you set the results to be sharable? Either via the URL or another way? This way the data of a specific region can be shared through a link and would extend the reach of the power of your data.

Also, is there a way to pull Strava heatmap data?

I also wonder if the number of users who track themselves on Trailforks varies by riding style. XC would seem more willing to use trailforks tracking (training background) while Endurbros might be less inclined.

P

1
1/14/2023 4:48pm

This is terrific.  It would be helpful to have a description on the basis for analysis data such as whether rides and riders are actual counts and from what database or if they are scaled estimates from counts.   It sounds like this is an estimate of riders based on Trailforks reports counts and the scaling factor comes from the field survey you did to find out the number or riders logging rides on Trailforks.   Also is the number of Rides and Riders the total for all the years displayed?   It would be nice to be able to select the years you wanted to have reported.   Thank you for sharing this tool.

Faust
Posts
7
Joined
11/5/2022
Location
Lakeville, MN US
1/16/2023 10:08am
This is terrific.  It would be helpful to have a description on the basis for analysis data such as whether rides and riders are actual counts...

This is terrific.  It would be helpful to have a description on the basis for analysis data such as whether rides and riders are actual counts and from what database or if they are scaled estimates from counts.   It sounds like this is an estimate of riders based on Trailforks reports counts and the scaling factor comes from the field survey you did to find out the number or riders logging rides on Trailforks.   Also is the number of Rides and Riders the total for all the years displayed?   It would be nice to be able to select the years you wanted to have reported.   Thank you for sharing this tool.

I added an about section that details how I'm an estimating both ride counts and revenue. Hopefully this helps clarify a few things!

1/18/2023 10:36am
Faust wrote:

I added an about section that details how I'm an estimating both ride counts and revenue. Hopefully this helps clarify a few things!

Thank you for that update making it easier to get to the estimate basis information.   That's very helpful and much appreciated.

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