Plan for Horses
Design Guidelines, Infrastructure, Case Studies and more...
The following resources are provided for recreation planners, and for groups wishing to create equestrian parks, or trails, and for riders, and advocates who want easy access to information to show the less enlightened trail planners (or decision makers).
Design Guides
Get Started with considerations for horse trails, and how to build multi-use trails
Infrastructure Design and Implementation Guides
Planning a trail, a park or a greenway? Understand what riders want and need. Find out what is happening overseas, and locally, in modern multi-use trail design and infrastructure.
Considering Trail Length
When planning a trail, or path the length of the path or trail is also important.
A short trail will have many more users within viewing distance of one another, creating the perception of potential conflict (even if none actually occurs). On long trails even very large numbers of users may never see one another (so narrow paths are still okay).i.e. divide the length of your trail by the expected number of users for a more accurate prediction of carrying caapcity instead of simply looking at numbers of users.
Important Note on International Design Guides:
When accessing international trail building, design, and specification documents it is important to carefully read the context and user numbers. United Kingdom, and United States trails are often dealing with a potential user base of many tens of millions of users. New Zealand trails should be compared to, in most cases, to overseas 'backwoods' or remote rural trail systems, with relatively few users.