Ever seen a skatepark use alternate surfaces for overflow/cross-traffic without it sucking?
Looking for input from people who've skated parks with heavy peak hour traffic that still somehow works without having to bail.
I live in a small-ish town with an exploding population and we're about to get the first modern skatepark on our side of the metroplex. Since we don't even have a local shop, it's anticipated the majority of participants when it first opens will be actual wheeled beginners with Christmas completes and parents who may not get skatepark flow or culture at all.
Now we're in the design phase and looking at the feasibility of creating a relatively inexpensive alternate surface around the hardscape so bikes, scooters, and e-things can get close to the action without having to get fully in the mix.
We have it in mind to keep a 10' wide lane open with a mellow transition for a return at one end of the lane and a nice open flat area for the queue. It should also have a slappy curb on the outside edge by the viewing area and a parallel ledge on the inside that blocks cross-traffic from the bumps and open mini-bowl.
The idea is for the alternate surface to go to the outside edge of that lane, divided by a slappy curb so the path looks visually distinct from the rest of the social/shaded area. When the micromobile groms show up to ride around the transition, we can still hopefully maintain an open lane for games of skate, ledge tricks, slappys, and flatground stuff with less opportunity for cross-traffic.
The goal isn't to exile anybody, just to reduce random collisions in a park that's probably going to be chaos for a while.
To be clear, this isn't me trying to astroturf a skatepark. There's a huge tree near the lane and we're trying not to destroy the thing making Texas summer survivable.
My question is: have you ever seen artificial surfaces that are hard enough to provide a gradual stop after rolling off concrete, but durable and easy to clean if vandalized? If so, can you share the location as an example so we can possibly pass it along to the planning committee?
We do currently have one of the most established skatepark vendors working with us, but I still have a lot of love for the crowd-sourced wisdom and creativity of reddit.
Go ahead and critique the idea if you have a better solution to the overflow/cross-traffic problem, but if you ridicule it, please at least make it funny.
Whoever helps the most gets to pretend they didn’t already triangulate where this beautiful disaster exists like skatepark detectives.