Pumping station: Austrian company opening new bike track at Benavides Park

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Alliance Action Sports Experts, a company based in Austria, has designed and built more than 200 bicycle “pump tracks” across Europe but never in the U.S. — until now.

Cameron County, specifically Pedro “Pete” Benavides Park just east of the Brownsville city limits at the end of California Road, is the site of the firm’s first U.S. project, which is nearing completion. It’s only the second pump track in the Rio Grande Valley. The first one opened in Harlingen in 2023, and the next nearest one is probably in San Antonio, according to Jake Carsten, president of Alliance ASE USA.

He described a pump track as “basically a continuous loop of rollers and berms with no flat spots.” The “pump” refers to the up-and-down motion of riders on the track, similar to the seesaw movement used to propel an old-fashioned handcar down a railroad track. In this case, the rider’s pumping motion uses body weight to gain momentum and propulsion.

“That’s literally the motion you’re doing with the bicycle, and once you learn that technique you can actually ride this without pedaling at all,” Carsten said.

Pump tracks are common in Europe and steadily gaining traction, so to speak, in the United States, Carsten said, adding that what started out as small dirt mounds and berms has progressed to “full-blown, municipal-grade facilities.”

Lee McCormick, author of the pamphlet “Pump Track Nation,” is considered the father of pump tracks in the United States, Carsten said. Asphalt is the pavement of choice because it’s better suited to bike tires compared to concrete, which paves most skate parks.

“The nice thing about the pump track is everything is rollable,” Carsten said. “I was at Harlingen and this husband and wife were there with their little 4-year-old daughter on a push bike. She was just dropping in and rolling and having fun on the track.”

No matter one’s age, if you can ride a bike you can have fun on a pump track, he said, adding that they’re also safe.

“The safety factor is very high versus a skate park, where you might have say an eight-foot bowl you’re dropping into, ledges and things like that,” Carsten said. “It’s very beginner friendly for scooters, roller skates, skateboards and of course bicycles.”

Aside from toddler push bikes, the bike of choice for the pump track is BMX-style with 20-inch wheels, fully rigid and no suspension, though a dirt jump bike with 26-inch wheels also works.

“I call them big kid BMX bikes, which is what I ride because I’m older,” Carsten said. “They have the geometry of a dirt jump bike but they’re 26 inch wheels, so they’re a little softer on the body. Mine has a front suspension fork that’s designed for this kind of stuff.”

Mountain bikes with full suspension aren’t the best choice, since the suspension tends to absorb the energy the body would otherwise use to propel bike and rider forward along the track.

The Benavides Park pump track, 492 feet in length with a 7 1/2-foot-wide track, located behind the Bob Clark Social Services Center across Browne Avenue from the main park, will also feature solar-powered lights for riding after sunset.

The construction crew at work on the track during this reporter’s recent visit included a small team of experts from Slovenia brought in by Alliance ASE.

It’s just the latest in a number of improvements to the park, which also includes extensive mountain bike trails, noted Precinct 1 County Commissioner Sofia Benavides, whose late husband created the park that bears his name.

Benavides Park, which recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new pickleball court, will likely wait on the pump track ribbon-cutting until other projects are completed.

“Since we’re doing a lot of improvements … across the street I thought maybe we would incorporate it,” she said. “We tore up all the concrete around the main pavilion. … I’m getting two more playgrounds put in.”

The pump track is being paid for with $424,000 in federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021 to help counter the economic fallout from the pandemic.

County Parks Director Joe Vega credited David Hernandez, founder/president of the Valley Off-Road Bicycling Association, with drawing the county’s attention to pump tracks.

“When David found out that we were building a mountain bike trail, he gave us a lot of great ideas and he brought this concept to us,” Vega said. “This is such an exciting project because it’s going to complement the new mountain bike trail that we just developed. It’s going to be a wonderful addition to this beautiful park.”

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