I have never ridden a bike on these trails - in fact, i don’t even have a bike. But i have walked/hiked them by myself, with my dog, with my wife, and with our kids. I’m glad they are there, and I’m glad that the More crowd built them. I really don’t think this is the forum for “Gruntled” to pitch a hissy; perhaps “Gruntled” should contact the Park System directly, or even assemble a team to go rebuild those steps on their own with their own money, which is what the More crowd did. This forum is about a fundraiser that helps the community - and I plan to go! “Gruntled” should too, and meet some More folks and offer to help, either with labor or with money.

A friend asked this in a recent conversation: if the work done is entirely self-serving, can it really be called ‘volunteering’? JRPS staff has created more work for itself and for it’s ‘volunteers’ in recent years, while letting other aspects of Park maintenance slide. Steps that provided better access for me and my fellow walkers have been neglected while new trail was blazed, trail that directly benefits the ‘volunteers’ who created it. I think Ralph et al, by embracing one group of ‘volunteers’, have turned their backs on other long time park users who have been quietly helping out for years, and in some cases decades.

I think you’re focus is in the wrong place here, DCR Maven. I was using “multi-use” as a general term, not some strictly defined bureaucratic jargon. I could have said “shared-use” or any other term that gets across the point that lots of people use the trails that Richmond MORE built. Yes, Buttermilk East has been around for a long time, but most of Buttermilk Heights, all of Northbank and two trail sections on Belle Isle were built by volunteers from Richmond MORE under the supervision of Nathan Burrell and Ralph White of the underfunded JRPS. No one would be walking their dog, jogging, or just enjoying the Park in those places if Richmond MORE hadn’t hacked those trails out of the cliffsides. We wouldn’t have events like the XTERRA triathlons, the Urban Assault, the 10K Scramble (1,300 runners this year), or the Maymont Half-Marathon in town if those trails didn’t exist.

Are they perfect? No. No trail system in the world is. All trails are constant works in progress. Mother Nature sees to that. Are there places that could be fixed up? Absolutely. But again, the JRPS’ budget is no match for all the work that needs to be done in the park every year. That’s why groups like MORE, JROC and others are so important. The city has neither the staff nor the funding to do all the work that needs doing.

City parks are meant to be used, in my humble opinion, and no group has done more to get people out using the JRPS than Richmond MORE.

Well, J Ray, you can always get in contact with the DCR, and just about every other State and National Park system, and tell them that their trail categorization system is ‘silly’. I’m sure they’ll change everything just for you: after all, accessibility ratings for the millions of people who use the nation’s parks are meaningless gibberish, and the ADA is just more red tape, and MORE can do whatever it wants.
Geesh, guys like you are giving our sport a bad name, and are the reason why we’re losing park access all over the country!

Woah there guys. A multi-use trail should be 8 to 12 feet wide.  Are you kidding me?  The only thing that allows for is too many people using the trail at one time.  Can you imagine an 8 foot wide trail for Buttermilk?  There are few things that people cannot do on the Buttermilk trails and fortunately for those people, there is an 8 to 12 foot wide trail from Belle Isle to the Nickle Bridge and around Belle Isle.  Getting nit-picky on semantics is just silly.  You can walk, bike, bird-watch, etc from Buttermilk.  There aren’t a lot of places to step aside for others passing, but no one wants these trails to be wider.  We won’t call them ‘multi-use’, we’ll call them ‘whatever you want to call them when you go out there and put the time into the trails that MORE has’. 
And ripping on the JRPS staff is just a low blow.  Ralph White and Nathan Burrell are there well beyond whatever hours they are getting paid for. The park would be half of what it is without all their time and effort.  White and his staff are only capable of so much.  Those who enjoy the park should come out and help keep it clean and maintained.

Andy, it would help if you were better informed about trail basics.

Check the VA DCR website for specifics:

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/recreational_planning/documents/toolbox.pdf

They define multi-use trails as being a minimum of 8ft wide, preferably 12 ft. in urban areas.

I love riding the JRPS trails downtown, but they are NOT multi-use!!

I’m referring to the steps on the original Buttermilk Trail, and the access steps that lead up to Riverside drive at about W 26th St. The bike trails just go next the the place where the steps were on the actual trail.
For the record, hikers and walkers never tore the Buttermilk trail to shreds in the first place. The trail itself continues to take a beating: once bike riders destroyed the steps, they simply shifted the trail. MORE should take better care of the trails that they co-opted from walkers: if they were the altruistic volunteers that they say they are, they would be fixing the damage they’ve done without needing you to promote their ‘good citizenship’.
JRPS staff could handle the maintenance workload without volunteers if they actually focused on doing their jobs!

Which stairs are you talking about, Gruntled? I can think of a couple of places where the Buttermilk Trail has stairs. Do you mean the stone stairs alongside the wood and brick ramp?

You should contact Richmond MORE (http://www.richmond-more.org) to see what their repair or building plans are for any specific section. I should point out that in many places, the group has taken pains to accommodate hikers, despite the fact that hikers generally do not contribute to MORE work sessions. Two examples: On the Northbank Trail and at the brand new re-route of the Buttermilk switchbacks, the JRPS staff and MORE have built separate trails for hikers to mitigate any usage conflicts. No one made them do this, but they realize these are multi-use trails that many people benefit from.

Will anyone be repairing the deteriorated stairs along the Buttermilk Trail anytime soon? It would be nice to have those walkable again, and to hear more than excuses from JRPS staff. Maybe Richmond-MORE will do something that benefits more than just the biking crowd: I’m tired of limping out of there with twisted ankles and strained knees!

It’s about time somebody did this!

Many thanks Richmond-MORE for making these trails and keeping them up. I don’t ride them, i just hike them, but I really appreciate your hard work.