Greenville County was awarded a $20,335,705 RAISE Grant and was the only recipient in South Carolina. The award was announced on June 26, 2024.
Ty Houck is the Manager of Greenways and Natural and Historic Resources for Greenville County Parks, Recreation and Tourism, and led this successful grant application
Ty Houck’s quote about the importance of data
“ The importance of QUALITY data cannot be overstated. In 2010, a year after the first 4 mile segment of the Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail Network opened, the County partnered with Furman University engaging in a 4 year SOPARC study.
SOPARC stands for System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities. It is a statistically valid way of collecting data that provided us with a wealth of user data including time and temp data when the trail is most heavily used, how far people are travelling to use the trail, what are the barriers to use, how long people are on the trail, etc. Today that quality data is still be used by community’s across the country to further their efforts to build shared use trail networks.
Locally, our data directly contributed to the advancement of the Doodle Trail, the Ecusta Trail and the Saluda Grade. That data and the evolution of data collection has lead to even more robust data being collected today.
Bike Walk Greenville’s partnership with the cities of Greenville and Travelers Rest has resulted in Eco-Counters being installed along the now 28+ mile Swamp Rabbit Network collecting detailed user data and showing that trail use continues to grow. BWG’s use of StreetLight Data, an on-demand transportation data collection service, has elevated our understanding of how people are using the network for transportation.
Through partnerships with Furman and Bike Walk Greenville this data has been directly involved with the County securing local, state, and federal funding, including the recent $20.3 million dollar federal RAISE grant. Again the importance of QUALITY data cannot be overstated. “