Golf cart traffic management

Golf carts are a fixture at most golf courses around the world. They add many advantages to a round of golf.  Carts can increase the speed of round of golf and allow someone to play 18 holes that may otherwise be unable to walk that much. However, carts can also be detrimental to a course and its appearance and maintenance. Proper cart traffic management is crucial to minimizing unnecessary stress on the turf grass.

No matter if you are driving on the beltway or the cart paths at Bretton Woods, everyone is in a hurry. For golfers, being in a hurry in a golf cart means cutting corners and driving across turf grass. While all golf cart traffic is stressful to the turf grass, driving in the rough and fairways is far less detrimental because of the size of the area. However, repeatedly cutting the inside corner of a turn can wear grass out as fast as anything and, because it is such a small area, each tire hits the exact same place. The grass wears thin, dies, and then the area turns to dirt and mud. Weeds may invade the worn areas, but even they cannot handle the constant traffic.

The Grounds department has a couple of techniques for managing these unsightly worn cart path edges, including something new this year. First, as you all have seen in the past, we use stakes to help guide carts around a corner instead of through it. These short, green and white stakes are just visible enough to catch your eye but they also blend in enough to not seem too unsightly. We have strategically placed these stakes at many “problem corners”- corners that have been continually worn out from cart traffic. We have more stakes that can be added to areas that develop through the season. We also will monitor the stakes that are currently in place to see if they need adjustment, if more are needed at a particular location, or if the stakes can be removed.

This year we have taken cart management a step further in our chronic trouble areas. We have taken large rocks that we have gathered from throughout the course and placed them at these worst locations. The rocks should work as a great deterrent to cutting the inside corner of a turn. Either, the driver of the cart will take a slightly wider angle on the turn or they will hit the rock with their golf cart. These rocks will be more than just a bump in the road due to their size, but have been used in areas that will not interfere with play. The rocks are a natural, more attractive and permanent tool for directing traffic.

Managing cart flow on a golf course is a constant and fluid challenge. As carts are directed away from one place it creates traffic wear in a new place. Shifting the patterns to different areas is the key to never letting one area be completely destroyed. With more lasting solutions to some of the worst corners, we can continue to monitor and shift traffic in other areas to reduce the unattractive worn out areas.

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org