Desire Paths

Bicycle/pedestrian path on the Queensboro Bridge in New York City. The two trenches are worn entirely by bicycle tire traffic. These are not car tracks as the width slightly varies later. The city has done zero effort to clean the bridge paths after the snow and almost zero effort to clean protected street bicycle paths. The intended use for this path is for pedestrians to be on the right half (you can see the middle dividing white line if you look for it), and for bicyclists to use the left two quarters. You can notice the yellow line intended to divide the two directions of bicycle traffic, with about 2ft per direction. The actual spacing resulting from natural use is on display and apparently way different.

No, Brussels

Love this one because of all the pigeons, somebody feeds them there and it's always a whole lot of them there, often times just happily fed and chilling.

Just outside of Pontarlier, France

Perpignan, France

Pic taken next to the Frauenberg chapel in Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany. The official path/avenue is too far on the right to be included in the pic, hope this still counts

Is even mapped on osm

Behind the hedges is a handicapped ramp, which is now the only way to get down there on a bike, other than riding (or carrying) down the stairs. To the left of it used to be my favorite desire path, cyclists only really, a dirt track that was quite the challenge to get up, especially when wet and muddy. It was the desire path that connects that part of town with the main train station, so heavily trafficked.

Then one day the city fenced it off at the top.

I was talking to a friend that we need to go there one night and take a piece of the fence out, i had checked and it was just fixed with regular bolts. Next time i passed by, somebody had already taken out that piece of the fence and it was ridable again. Amazing.

Sometime later they opened a huge construction site to the left of it and fenced it off again, pretty much unremovable. I think when they're finished with the construction, there should be an actual road going down there, but i'm curious if we might see a resurgance of the old desire path.

Somewhere close to Aschaffenburg, Germany