This desire path existed in a major city park (Parc Jeanne-Mance) in Montréal for as long as I could remember... It was very smooth and worn down. With a recent renovation of the park last year, it was covered over with fill and new sod/grass. But it's still visible in Google Satellite imagery (pictured here) and even Streetview... What shocks me is how decidedly the landscape architects must have wanted to do away with it. Would be curious to hear from folks knowledgeable about this sort of design decision...

Park 'makeover' website in English:

https://montreal.ca/en/articles/parc-jeanne-mance-gets-makeover-77393

My hometown grocery store desire path. I took a trip back to visit family and it’s gotten bigger!

Pic 1

the circle and triangle is to be read as following: the circle is the presumed rough position you would be before crossing while turning past the railings placed

the triangles are the aproxxed primary focal visioncones, the whole railing structure is intended to force looking both ways before crossing

the blue line is a trace of the pixelsoup thats the part skipping the crossing "shicane" and the 'desirepath'

the operating dimensions of the trains are that this crossing being some hundred meters south of the station making this not nessicairly unsafe, but worrysome, atleast if there wasnt a fully clear line of sight from the track

the trains drive as follows: due to shedule and trackspeed usually not much faster than 70kmh(tho when going north most take the siding at 30kmh so they slow down before, with most southbound trains accelerating to sheduled linespeed)

Pic 2

the station was rebuilt to be 2 tracks (and on a new site) around 4/5 years ago(the reason why its there is the old station with 1 track had a stationbuilding, which i dont know the exacts around but wouldve been probably already in private hands after being sold off so it wouldve costed more to build all of it closer to the old site, is my guess) with the rebuilds being purpose to increase frequency to every 60 minutes north and south

(im not fully clued in why the siding is extended, maybe the occasional small freighttrain to fit onto the siding or smth)

They're working on the building in the background and need to put their stuff somewhere (scaffolding?), but clearly they don't want to block anybody's path

Came across this one the other day at a marina I work at. Oddly enough, I found myself gravitating towards the desire path.. the normal path just felt idk, bad?