Clovis Trails Usage Exceeds 3 Million People for 2020

The City of Clovis has recorded over 3 million people who has used the trails for 2020. (Clovis Roundup Photo)

The City of Clovis completed their annual trail count for the year 2020. Every year, they document the volume of people using the trails in Clovis. The City Council was presented with the count of participation on the trails as a received and file item.

Colleen Vidinoff, Engineer for the City of Clovis, gave a presentation at the City Council meeting on the number of people who used the trails in the past year on on February 1.

It is estimated that over 3 million people used the City of Clovis trails during the past year, even with bad air quality and the stay at home orders.

The usage number is not exact, because the counters might not count everyone using the trail. Especially, if there is a lot of traffic at the time of counting.

Vindinoff mentioned that numbers for trail usage were up from previous years. The summer usage had dramatically increased. She believes the stay at home orders had a lot to do with people staying in town and using the trails instead of traveling out of town.

Regardless of the forest fires and bad air quality, the usage of the trails continued to be steady according to Vindinoff.

On a weekly basis, the two trails with the most usage were Dry Creek Trail with 6,003 people and the Old Town Trail with 4,679 people.

Vindinoff went on to mention how the improvement of trails and connecting them to other trails, will only improve the numbers seen from last year.

Councilmember Bob Whalen stated he has received numerous calls from people outside of Clovis to ask about the trails. He also said many people in the city were introduced to the trails because of the pandemic.

Another thing Whalen commented was how well the city is doing in connecting trails with new developments and neighborhoods. However, they should also connect to existing neighborhoods and commercial avenues.

Jorge Rodriguez has a passion for journalism and wants to bring the community information and great stories. After high school Jorge joined the U.S. Army and while in active duty he was deployed twice to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in college he worked for the Fresno City College Rampage and the Fresno State Collegian newspapers. He graduated from Fresno State in 2019 with a degree in print journalism.