Bike Trail Usage Soars!
Loveland, Ohio – With all the buzzing discussion going on around Loveland the last two weeks concerning returning the farmers market to Historic Downtown, traffic congestion, and parking – here is some news that Loveland Magazine can add to help sort things out.
[quote_left]Most of these bike trail users from Miamiville to Loveland to Fosters started in, or passed through Nisbet Park in Historic Loveland.[/quote_left]The entire trail-corridor Little Miami State Park was visited an estimated 910,000 times during 2015, a 20% increase over the previous year. The surge is attributed to the trail’s growing popularity and more accurate data handling.
The section of the Little Miami State Park Bike Trail from Miamiville, through Loveland and into Fosters had an estimated 187, 823 users in the year 2015. Data collecting has begun for 2016. During this mild winter, nearly 5,200 bike trail users have passed through Nisbet Park in the month of January.
The Friends of the Little Miami State Park (FLMSP), an all-volunteer organization that performs maintenance and special projects in the park, recently released results of its year-long Trail Uses Counting Program along the park’s 50-mile-long section of the Little Miami Scenic Trail. In 2015, the program’s second year, accuracy was improved through upgraded equipment and better data handling.
The purpose of the program according to FLMSP, “Is to provide reliable data that demonstrates the popularity of the trail corridor state park, a valuable regional asset that merits increased state and donor funding for its restoration and maintenance.”
The Trail Uses Counting program is possible because of the extensive research and strategic planning by Paul Morgan, a former FLMSP board member and trail adopter. John Theuring, trained by Morgan, now leads the program.
Theuring broke out the numbers for Loveland Magazine, that are most pertinent to the portion of the trail, popularly known around town as “The Loveland Bike Trail.”, from Historic Downtown Loveland running north into Warren County towards Morrow was the first leg of the trail paved with asphalt in 1983 along the abandoned railroad and the State and National Scenic Little Miami River in Loveland.
Below is the data Theuring gathered for us:
The section of the Little Miami State Park Bike Trail from Miamiville to Fosters had an estimated 187, 823 users in the year 2015. These users make up 21% of all of the bike trail users for 2015. Right in the middle of this is the City of Loveland. Most of these bike trail users started in, or passed through Nisbet Park.
Of the 55 miles the span the Little Miami State park Bike Trail, the section through Loveland is one of the most traveled section on the trail as shown in the graph below.
Data collecting has begun for 2016. During this mild winter, nearly 5200 bike trail users have passed through Nisbet Park in the month of January.
For information on how the numbers are determined, please see the 2015 Trail Uses Counting Program report posted on the Friends of the Little Miami State Park website.
About our Park & Trail
The Little Miami State Park, a trail corridor park, is approximately 50 miles long and 66 feet wide. It starts at Avoca Park, just south of Milford, a suburb of Cincinnati, and meanders northeast along the banks of the Little Miami River to Hedges Road, just south of Xenia, Ohio. The park is the right-of-way of the old Little Miami Railroad and the paved trial is where its steel tracks once ran. It provides recreation for bicycling, walking, jogging, rollerblading, horseback riding and cross-country skiing. Many people use the trail as a safe place to exercise, making it an important resource in our nation’s fight against obesity and other health concerns.
The park spans most of the Little Miami Scenic Trail and connects with several hundred miles of trail that make up the Miami Valley trail system. Its full length is part of the Ohio-to-Erie Trail that spans over 300 miles from Cincinnati to Cleveland.
The first section of asphalt trail surface was laid down in late 1983 (13.5 miles from Loveland to Morrow) and this first section was officially dedicated at a public ceremony at Loveland in May 1984.
