Recreation Aotearoa invites you to provide feedback and comment on the New Zealand Mountain Bike Trail and Design Construction Guidelines.

First released in July 2018, these guidelines have a three yearly review process to ensure they remain current, accurate and fit for purpose.

If you are involved with managing, commissioning, specifying, building, maintaining or auditing mountain bike trails, we would welcome your feedback on the Guidelines, which will lead to the publication of Version Two.

Since 2018, two important things have happened in this space:

1. The New Zealand Cycle Trail Design Guide (version five) was updated in August 2019 (incorporating much of the RA mountain bike information)

2. DOC released their Cycle Tracks Service Standards in October 2020 (drawing on the specifications of both the RA Guidelines and NZCT Design Guide)

While it is not ideal to have three separate documents available for similar spaces, the three have different uses. The Recreation Aotearoa Guidelines are the only one focused solely on mountain bike specific trails.

While much of the crucial specification between the three documents is well-aligned (e.g., gradient, width, corner radius) the Recreation Aotearoa guideline provides additional and mountain bike specific specification (e.g., uphill/downhill trails, technical trail features, ramp angles etc).

Recreation Aotearoa welcomes your feedback on this review. Please use the following format for feedback and send to Jen Riley at outdoors@nzrecreation.org.nz before August 15^th.

An example is provided below:

Specification	Comments	Suggestions
Trail Surface	Grade 3 Intermediate does not specify an obstacle height	Add in a comment such as: '...where the trail surface is broken by rock, roots, scree or other obstacles less than 100mm high'