Press Materials
Expansion Press Release
Trail Finder Expands to Addison and Grand Isle Counties
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2009
Contact:
Chapin Spencer, Executive Director, chapin@localmotion.org
Todd Taylor, Marketing Manager, todd@localmotion.org
TRAIL FINDER EXPANDS TO ADDISON AND GRAND ISLE COUNTIES ON JUNE 2
Phase III Expansion To Be Announced
ADDISON COUNTY – Launched in 2008 in Chittenden County, the online Trail Finder will triple its geographic area to include Addison and Grand Isle counties starting Tuesday, June 2.
Over three years in development with 70 volunteers, the Trail Finder is a free online resource with now over 100 walking, biking, hiking, mountain biking and skiing trails in western Vermont. Residents and visitors can get maps and directions, learn about the trails’ features, see photos and submit comments.
The Trail Finder is a partnership between 60 towns, trail groups, tourism entities
and regional planning organizations. Trail managers have helped provide data and
have special access to the Trail Finder’s “back end” to update information instantly.
Partners are recognized at the bottom of every web page. The details of the
ambitious Phase III expansion will be announced at the June 2 event.
ADDISON COUNTY (PHASE II) TRAIL FINDER UNVEILING
Tuesday, June 2 at Noon
Marbleworks Green, Middlebury, Vermont (Rain location: Alpine Shop)
Speakers include:
- Adam Lougee, Director, Addison County Regional Planning Commission
- Katherine Branch, Volunteer, Middlebury Area Land Trust
- Scott Mallory, Middlebury Bike Club
- Representatives from future (Phase III) Trail Finder regions
Skirack (www.skirack.com) is the project’s 2009 underwriting sponsor. The Trail Finder has also been funded by Vermont Recreation Trails Program, Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization and Local Motion members.
Trail Finder web address: www.localmotion.org/trails
For press materials and images, go to: www.localmotion.org/trails/press.php
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Trail Finder Wins National Award
Local Motion's online trail mapping resource recently won a national award from American Trailsfor the site's design and functionality. But we're not resting on our laurels. By June 1, the Trail Finderwill be expanded to cover Addison and Grand Isle counties – over 60 additional trails! Want to help with this award winning project? Volunteer today! Contact: Todd Taylor (todd@localmotion.org)
Screenshots
Click to enlarge and download.
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Trail Finder homepage with search bar and interactive map showing trail markers |
Search results page displaying map and results list. |
Trail page showing detailed points of interest, trail description, managing entity and photos. |
Logos
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Media Coverage
Trail Mix-Up by Lauren Ober, Seven Days, Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Navigating Vermont’s byways with Local Motion’s online guide
http://www.7dvt.com/2009trail-mix
Local Motion Bicycle Trail Finder, CCTV, April 22, 2008
http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/municipalities/programs/local-motion-bicycle-trail-finder
Channel 17 was onhand at our Earth Day Press Conference and had this coverage (see streaming video above or on their site). Thanks CH 17!
Link: http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/municipalities/programs/local-motion-bicycle-trail-finder
Local Motion launches new trail service, Lauren Ober, Burlington Free Press, April 25, 2008
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080425/LIVING/804250305/1004
Nearly every day, an out-of-stater looking to visit Burlington calls one of the local bike shops and ask what trails to ride. The employees are accommodating and send the tourists in the direction of the Waterfront bike path or one of the many mountain bike trials in the county.
But in our digital world, where seemingly everything we need to know is a mouse-click away, directions over the phone just don't seem to cut it. Those looking for information want the one-stop shopping convenience of the Internet.
Local Motion, an area bicycling advocacy group, understood that people needed an up-to-date trail resource. After three years in development, the organization recently launched Trail Finder, a comprehensive Web-based mapping system of all the public recreation trails in Chittenden County. The launch appropriately coincided with Earth Day.
Up until now, no such resource existed on the Web for trails in Chittenden County. There were piecemeal trail guides on various municipal and mountain biking Web sites, but there were no sites that compiled all the trails in the county. A comprehensive Web resource like this was essential for the recreational future of the region, said Chapin Spencer, executive director of Local Motion.
"It seemed from every angle the critical thing to do," Spencer said. "Residents were asking for it and we realized we needed to take the bull by the horns."
The mission of the Trail Finder project is three-fold, Spencer said. This free service makes the community healthier, strengthens the local tourism economy and helps better connect the trails in the county to achieve a true regional network, he said.
To develop such a labor-intensive project, Local Motion needed the services of an Internet-savvy young person, so they hired Todd Taylor fresh out of University of Vermont. Taylor was charged with coordinating the efforts of 50 volunteers and 40 community partners to map the trails and make the site user-friendly.
Over the past three years, bands of volunteers have ridden, walked, cross-country skied and snowshoed every public trail in the county while taking GPS readings, snapping photos and writing down notable features of the trails. Because there is no real county government, the Local Motion folks had to work directly with each individual town to find the trails.
The $25,000 project was funded largely with grants from the Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization, as well as the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation's Vermont Recreation Trails Program and donations from Local Motion members. Spencer said the price tag was cheap when compared with the $2,500 they spend each year printing just one of the many trail route maps they provide.
The site is about as user-friendly as the Internet can get. Simply type in the name of a town and find out all the trails there. Or click on the drop-down menu to search by trail use.
A quick search of Williston brings up six trails whose uses range from gentle cross-country skiing to strenuous mountain biking. Each of the trail listings comes with directions to the trailhead as well as a description of the terrain. The listings also provide contact information for the trail managers and a place for users to comment on the trails.
The Trail Finder project couldn't have come at a better time, says Tom Torti, president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. With tourism expected to grow substantially this summer, Torti says the Web site will prove invaluable for visitors looking to participate in recreational activities in the area.
"We are very excited about this program. We can promote it and sell it, and it'll be a huge boon for this area," Torti said.
The SkiRack in Burlington, which has underwritten part of the Trail Finder cost, is one of those bike shops where tourists come to get trail information. People are always coming in asking where to ride, says Spike Clayton, one of the co-owners of the shop. Clayton sees the Web site not only as an important community resource, but also as a good investment of their marketing dollars.
"I'm wowed at what's at people's fingertips," Clayton said. "We're totally excited about it."
The maps on the current Trail Finder site (www.localmotion.org/trails) are only the first phase of the project. The organization has recently received funding to start the second phase of the initiative, which will include mapping on-road cycling routes around the county and off-road cycling routes beyond Chittenden County. Taylor, who designed the mapping system, says this resource was totally unique in the state.
"This covers the whole breadth," Taylor said. "We think it will be really popular."
Contact Lauren Ober at 660-1868 or lober@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.
On the Web: www.localmotion.org/trails
New Trail Finder Goes Online, WCAX, 4-22-08
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=8210541&nav=menu183_2
Burlington, Vermont - April 22, 2008
Getting around for people who like to enjoy the outdoors just got a bit easier.
There's a new trail finder. It's a free online resource that lists 77 walking, biking, mountain biking and hiking trails in Chittenden County. People who use the free site can get maps, directions and learn about the trails. There will also be a spot for people to submit comments and photos.
Setting up the system took over two years and dozens of volunteers. The plan is to expand it over time-- eventually making it statewide.
"From residences and actually the Chamber of Commerce and tourism entities had guests saying we want to go out and try biking there, we want to go running, where can we go and they didn't have the maps so it got to be logistically difficult. Now we're putting the maps in the hands of everybody," explains Chapin Spencer of Local Motion.
Click here to visit the Trail Finder website.
Kristin Carlson - WCAX News
Tech Trek: Fingers do the walking on Local Motion’s new Trail Finder, Sarah Tuff, Seven Days, 4-16-08
http://www.7dvt.com/2008/tech-trek
Fifteen years ago, University of Vermont computer-science lecturer Robert Erickson hiked the 270-mile Long Trail end to end. He’s backpacked through Alaska, paddled much of Lake Champlain, and climbed to the summit of Camel’s Hump in the winter. Now that Erickson has two preschool-aged girls, however, he’s more likely to be found tramping the trails around his Essex home. And it’s more difficult than you might imagine.
While entire books track the Long Trail, printed info on smaller, neighborhood byways tends to be scarce. “I can look at a town map or pick up little trail guides,” says Erickson. “But how do I actually get there?”
Starting next Tuesday, April 22, Erickson and thousands of other trail users in northern Vermont will be able to get there from here — or anywhere. They’ll also be able to zoom in on satellite photos of scores of Chittenden County trails and identify overlooks, beaches and restrooms. Hikers, walkers, in-line skaters and bikers (and, when the snow flies again, cross-country skiers) will be able to check mileages, plan their parking and determine if a trail is Fido- or fat-tire friendly. And they can do this long before lacing up their shoes and heading out the door — from their own computers.
All these features are part of Local Motion’s new online Trail Finder, which the Burlington-based nonprofit plans to unveil on Earth Day. Two years in the making, the free website contains dozens of downloadable and printable maps and directions to nearly 80 different trails, from Milton’s Eagle Moun-tain to the Williams Woods in Charlotte.
“We’ve dreamt about this for a long time now,” says Local Motion marketing manager and former Erickson student Todd Taylor. He points out that, while his organization’s Trailside Center on the Burlington Bike Path has a wall covered with maps, there’s been no single resource for outdoor enthusiasts who want the dirt on Vermont trails.
Over the past two years, Taylor says, Local Motion recruited more than 50 volunteers to contribute their trail and technology smarts to the Trail Finder site. Erickson was one: As a member of the Essex Trails Committee, he helped upload his community’s trails into the database. Now, if you search by town and select “Essex,” you come up with a Google map on which a bunch of squiggly purple lines designate unpaved, shared-use trails, while red lines represent paved, shared-use ones. (Green lines signify “walking and hiking only.”)
Clicking on one of the purple trails produces a Google Earth satellite image of Indian Brook Park, along with a lively description of its loops, mountain-biking terrain and boat-launch area. The nonprofit organization Fellowship of the Wheel supplies regular info on mountain-biking trails and conditions.
To pinpoint the exact locations of many trails, Local Motion relied on Vermonters with savvy in the field of geographic information systems (GIS), such as Pam Brangan, the GIS Services/IT Systems administrator for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. After helping Local Motion find dependable global-positioning-system (GPS) handheld devices to map out trails, Brangan explains, she used digital aerial photos and other GIS data to correct the GPS data, which can go askew in heavily wooded areas.
Taylor says the combination of this technological sophistication with input from passionate local outdoors-people is what makes Trail Finder unique. And, unlike international sites such as Trails.com, which charges $49.95 a year to access information on 40,000 trails in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, Local Motion’s Trail Finder is free.
“We’re all about getting people the information they need in order to have a healthy lifestyle, so from the start it’s been a free concept,” says Taylor. He notes that ads may help support the website, along with membership funds and grant money.
Fulfilling that broader mission may involve connecting with other databases, such as an inventory of Vermont playgrounds, parks and pedestrian paths that local trails volunteer Fred Schmidt helped develop in 2005 at the Center for Rural Studies. Down the road, Trail Finder will also expand beyond Chittenden County, says Taylor. “The scale of it makes more sense for regional information,” he explains.
As for the Burlington area, there’s just one problem, says Erickson: “We’d like to connect the dots more. Had people thought about trails 100 years ago when divvying up the land, it would be a piece of cake.” Instead, Erickson says, trail advocates are trying to figure out a way to connect all those squiggly lines across railroads, highways, shopping developments and private land.
Maybe, he adds, the new Trail Finder will help private landowners contemplate how they can contribute to the movement. After all, “Trails are great for connecting communities together.”
Info: Local Motion’s Trail Finder launches on Earth Day, April 22. For more information, visit www.LocalMotion.org/trails or call 652-2453.
Initial Launch: April 17, 2008
