Madison Biking Adventure Project Cycles to Community Engagement

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posted September 25, 2020 - 9:41 am

For the regular bicycle rider, finding dedicated biking lanes and city streets to ride in Madison is relatively easy. If you’re seeking a little adventure for your ride, your search can be a bit difficult. For many years, residents have been asking for natural surface bike facilities such as single track and pump tracks. Survey results, documented in the 2018-2023 Park and Open Space Plan show biking as a top desired parks amenity.

To respond to this demand and plan the addition of such amenities, Madison Parks applied for and received a planning grant from the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), an organization that specializes in bike facility planning projects such as these.

The result of these planning efforts has yielded a rough draft of what we are preliminarily calling the Madison Bicycle Adventure Trail or MadBAT.

MadBAT is a natural surface trail, optimized for biking yet allows for walking and running. It is a citywide network of nodes and arms connecting parks and greenways to neighborhoods. The network would be implemented much like the existing paved bicycle facilities Madison enjoys, over the course of years and in many different phases.

The first step is creating a master plan document envisioning trail network locations and project goals with input from the community. The City of Madison Parks Division is hosting three community engagement meetings. At each of the meetings, City staff will provide a short overview of the project, followed by two 15-minute breakout sessions for attendees to learn more about off-road natural surface trails, their purpose, benefits, and components. The meetings will conclude with a question and answer session.

The community is invited to attend these meetings and provide feedback. Prior to the meeting and providing feedback, please review the online project Story Map introducing the project.

Each of the meetings will be held virtually, from 6:00 – 7:30pm on the following dates.