The Dallas County Conservation Board received two reports at its February meeting, both exploring ways to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the board’s many facilities and programs and particularly of the Raccoon River Valley Trail.
The conservation board heard first from the CyBiz Lab team, a student-led group in the Iowa State University business school that takes on consulting projects. The board has worked with CyBiz for about one year on a project for quantifying the bike trail’s economic impact on towns along the trail.
The graduate students and undergraduates in the CyBiz Lab conducted a series of online and face-to-face surveys of Raccoon River Valley Trail users last spring and summer and learned a lot about the habits of trail users — where they got on and off the trail, how much they spent while making their way, how large a group they rode in, how many miles they traveled — and about their economic impact as riders.
The CyBiz Lab online survey produced 654 responses and the face-to-face survey 202 responses. According to the report’s summary, the surveys revealed several notable things about the trail and its users:
- The primary activity of trail users is biking.
- The majority of trail users believe that the Raccoon River Valley Trail is better compared to other trails they have visited.
- The average trail user is between the ages of 45 and 64, spends $6-$20 when visiting the trail, and purchases food at restaurants when stopping in a town.
- The town that generates the most money from the trail is Dallas Center, bringing in a conservatively estimated range of $76,896 to $98,704 in the summer season.
- Trail user age and household income have a direct relationship with spending habits.
Of the 202 in-person surveys, 142 were conducted at the Waukee trailhead, 28 in Perry, 19 in Adel and 13 in Dallas center.
The Dallas County Conservation Board hopes to use the CyBiz Lab data to attract new businesses to trail towns and give residents ion the towns themselves a clearer notion of the benefits the trail brings.
“If there’s somebody who’s unsure of whether or not the trail is beneficial, this should help,” said conservation board member Jim Miller of Waukee. “And it comes back to that idea that if we have this information available and the other trails in central Iowa don’t have it available, it probably gives us a marketing advantage that will be beneficial down the road.”
Conservation Board member Mark Powell of Dallas Center sketched out a hypothetical trail rider who is also a potential trail-town business owner.
“If I come Nebraska to ride the Raccoon River Valley Trail,” Powell said, “and I’m riding it and thinking, ‘I’ve always wanted to pull of a roller skating rink in some small town.’ If in thinking about it, I have those numbers in front of me, I may be more inclined to actually make that a reality.”
The board will continue working with CyBiz Lab to communicate relevant information to bike trail stakeholders, such as local chambers of commerce and regional economic development groups.
The board then reviewed a timeline for a strategic plan they commissioned from the engineering firm of Snyder and Associates. Gathering data through surveys will also play a big part in the strategic plan but where the CyBiz Lab surveys focused only on the bike trail, the Snyder and Associates survey will measure the overall effectiveness of the Dallas County Conservation Board’s resources.
Snyder and Associates Project Manage Mindy Moore and Planner Jennifer Wiltgen Roberts presented a work schedule in which the surveys will be conducted in April and May, followed by analysis and development of marketing strategies.
The board spent time discussing possible member of the strategic plan committee, possibly including county conservation staff and board members, city, state and other governmental recreation figures and figures from advocacy, non-profit and other sectors.
The conservation board will revisit the strategic plan at the March meeting, Tuesday, March 14 at 5:30 p.m. at Forest Park Museum, 14581 K Ave. in Perry.
