2012-01-26 14:49:52

HEATHCOTE PIPELINE PARKING & ACCESS THREAT

If you’ve ever ridden the sweeping Heathcote Pipeline track out to Woronora Dam, you may recall where you parked: at the end of Forum Drive, a couple of hundred metres off Heathcote Road, a quiet, leafy residential cul de sac, that…well… NO MORE! A Development application from the Brethren Church proposes a 900-seat meeting hall plus 6 residential blocks to be sited between the two cul-de-sacs of Forum Drive North & South.

If it goes ahead you can forget about parking in Forum Drive on a Sunday and maybe the whole weekend… An alternative entry point to the pipeline is available a hundred metres north along the busy Heathcote Road, but being on an 80Km/hr downhill, it’s almost impossible to enter or exit safely by car or bike… and anyway it only has space for a single car…

The local community is up in arms about the plan, because the meeting hall will be built adjacent to Heathcote National Park bush, with the resulting risk of bushfires plus the churchgoing attendees blocking narrow streets with traffic and parked cars all hours of the day and night.

Article about the concerns: http://www.theleader.com.au/news/local/news/general/brethren-church-project-concerns-residents/2417109.aspx

Website and a petition are available at: www.heathcoteresidents.com.au

So, maybe head out there (hey, when it dries up!). Who knows, it might be the last ride on that trail…

MT ANNAN XC TRACK EXTENTION GATHERING SOME NEGATIVE PRESS…

From the Trail page comments: Sumnoob: The advanced section is all back to front! I had to stop a couple of times to make sure I hadn’t taken a wrong turn and done the thing back to front. All that tight single track wasted by having to go up it?!?

With limited space in the area, I would have thought the open downhill that followed would have been better off as the climb to the top, getting you more downhill singletrack. Seriously, who wants to climb singletrack only to have to descend on double track / fire trail? Wasted opportunity. Good fitness and skill building it might be, but not much fun. Mt Annan sometimes feels like being back at school, learning by rote. With Appin, Loftus and soon Menai nearby, there are more fun places to get your learning in!

HORNSBY SHIRE QUARRY TRAIL UPDATE:

From HSMBA: “Is this the year that we build? I think we said that in 2009 didn’t we? ☺

But now;
- The review of environmental factors has been completed, and the Environmental, Aboriginal and Heritage issues are OK.
- Approvals have been completed with Council, the public exhibition has finished and complaints resolved (Council ended up making a 100m reduction in the East Side trails but we got to keep 90% of it thanks to the MTB community response).
- The detailed flagging and mapping of 6km of trails was completed in December.
- Funding has been approved.
- Stage 1 (the eastern half) is ready to go.
- Final hurdle - Stage 2 requires the Plan Of Management (POM) to be finalized. We hope this will occur before May when we want to build.

Council now needs to select a contractor to build it.

Stage 1 will be a contractor + volunteer effort. We will keep you posted on the volunteer days but we will try and have quite a few and vary the times to help capture people’s availability. We are looking at late Feb / Mar to start construction.

Although contractors will do the majority, Council are very keen to have the community very involved from the get go. We agree with this approach, as we want riders to have a sense of ownership and control over the trails.

We want to see trails built that the MTB community are proud to be associated with and want to ride. A lot of HSMBA’s focus now will be working to ensure the trails built are what cyclists want and that they are not “sanitized”.

Thank you to those who again wrote to Council encouraging them to move forward with the plans. Without all those letters and your patience we would not have overcome the many hurdles or obtained funding from NPWS or Council!” (from HSMBA)

OLD MAN VALLEY TRAILS PoM

The Plan Of Management for the Old Man Valley has had to go on exhibition again due to some complaints (not related to MTB). Check it out at the following link. Feel free to make a comment about getting MTB trails in there and making sure the facilities for the specialty park are integrated with the cycling trails. www.hornsby.nsw.gov.au

Comments should be emailed to hsc@hornsby.nsw.gov.au

LAST... John & I rode Mt Irvine Road (off Bells Line of Road, past Bilpin) last weekend: unexpected & superb firetrail. More next week…

Cheers, Grant Shatford