I design pump tracks in Australia, and something I keep running into is that local councils almost always ask for a “skills track” as part of the project.
Pump tracks are usually busy and well understood. Skills parks… less so. So what actually is a 'skills track'? And who are they for? Balance bikes? MTB's? BMX?
What I would like to know is if you ride pump tracks or jumps, what would you like to see the 'skills track' become. Because unfortunately, councils and the organisations who put the money forward to build these facilities will continue to request skills tracks. We can't convince them to invest the money into more jumps or a bigger pump track, but we do have an opportunity to reshape what they look like and who they serve.
I would love to hear success stories of skills tracks and where they fail. The more rider input we get, the more we can understand this unique and often misaligned piece of the biking world which I would love to see become something really cool. Organisations all over the world are beginning to invest big into biking so let's turn that investment into something we want to see and want to ride.