happy, healthy bike rider on trail |
Who are all those people using our nation’s trails?
I can’t give a conclusive answer for all trail users, but I can give you information about the TrailLink audience, thanks to a brief overview found on the traillink website.
* 62% of the users are male and 38% female (a bit of a surprise)
* 71% of them are between the ages of 31 & 60 years old with ages 46 to 60 being the most dominant group.
* 70% of users are college graduates (I figured the college educated group would be larger, but not that significantly larger.)
* 87% of trail users are bicyclists, 43% walkers, 31% hikers (hmmm, is there that much of a difference betwixt walkers & hikers?), and 17% are runners. (This percentage fits right in with what I’ve seen on the trails too, except, I always get completely confused between the walkers and hikers.) (-:
I did my own informal “trail user poll” and came up with the following important statistic:
On any given day, out of 100 trail users, 99 of them were happy, healthy, and friendly, while one was a cranky old fart. The good news is, if I didn’t keep including myself in these polls, trail users would be 100% awesome.