Bike trail site suitability using site a Slope Raster and 3D Imaging
Introduction
Trail riding is arguably the most common mountain biking style because the category isn’t grounded in any specific type of racing. It's
for any rider interested in riding solo or meeting up with friends at the local trailhead and riding a mixture of climbs and descents.
There is more to trail building than moving rocks, logs and dirt. Bike trails usually end up being part of larger systems that are the
result of highly technical planning and collaboration. These bike trail systems should comply with the riding ability of the widest
spectrum of riders as well as environmental guidelines.
In order to achieve a trail network which complies with all or most of the characteristics above mentioned there must be a planning
phase where the different options for where and how the trails will be built are analyzed. Cutting edge computer programs such are
ArcMap and ArcPro allow planners and trail builders to display and visualize different elements and how they would interact with the
environment and make smarter decisions for the future form and function of the whole network. Visualizing maps in 3D offers new
and interesting perspectives for developing a strategies for smarter and more efficient trail building
Rider: Adrian Martinez

Project objectives
• Support the local trail building crew by conducting a spatial analysis for route
identification.
• Find the most efficient access route utilizing 3D spatial analysis in order to
streamline trail building logistics.
• Confirm the proposed trails comply with trail building regulations while
improving access and connectivity to paved roads.
• To identify potential lengths of trail requiring extra time and resources to be
built.

Methodology
• Data and background information gathering from Barry McLane GIS/IT
Technician @ City of Rossland and Stewart Spooner Operations Manager at
Kootenay Columbia Trails Society (KCTS).
• Displaying of Existing Trails by level, Zoning Polygons and streams in am
ArcMap 2D map.
• Create a slope raster from a DEM using the Reclassify Geoprocessing tool.
• Display all the Data listed above in a 3D map on ArcScene for further visual
analysis using different perspectives of the exaggerated Z axis.
• Create a 3D animation for presentation and final user display on any tablet
device.

Results
No major limitations were found in order to build the three trail segments
proposed by the KCTS to be built in summer 2019. The two trail segments on the
North facing slope are in crown land and the one on the south facing slope
crosses through 4 different parcels within the City of Rossland zoning area, three
of them zoned as Parks and Open space and one of them as Residential Rural.
The section of trail crossing on the Residential Rural parcel is 73 meters long.
The closest distance to a stream is 45m therefore no constraints were found
from the hydrologic point of view.
A special concern area was found overlaying the slope raster on the ArcScene 3D
map. The south facing slope has an area of about 100m with steep gradient
(40% slope) that may need more time and resources to be built according to the
trail building structural standards.

Limitations and Assumptions
The first limitation encountered working on this project was the lack of guidance
from the client in terms of narrower parameters to determine the suitability for
proposed trails.
Switching from ArcMap to ArcPro some metadata was loss or didn’t display in a
standardized way for both programs: In the case of the City of Rossland feature
dataset it didn’t load onto ArcPro.
Exporting a 1 minute 3D video file in HD 1080 format takes approximately 3
hours using the hardware available at the computer lab, this means any
modification to a video file is time consuming.
In addition to the last point, ArcScene does not allow to make changes such as
changing the layers displayed in a single video export; the methodology used to
work around this limitation was to export different video files with different
desired characteristics and merge them in a single video edit using GoPro studio.