Text-only version. View the full version of this page · All text pages

Multi-Use Trail / Greenway

COL-MUT-06
Recommended Collector

Multi-Use Trail / Greenway

An off-street path shared by pedestrians and bicyclists under roughly equal priority, similar to Shared-Use Path but longer-distance and often a destination in its own right, such as a rail-trail or linear park path.

Related Media

The items below come from outside the Commonway System, external videos, podcasts, and articles related to this page's topic, not part of the guidebook itself.

Aligned

The Reason Our Streets Switched to Cul-De-Sacs

City Beautiful

Traces the postwar shift from connected grid networks to tree-shaped cul-de-sac subdivisions, then covers the same shared-use-path connector strategy CS's Network Reconnection retrofit recommends for stitching disconnected cul-de-sacs back into the surrounding network.

Typical at: Rural Suburban Compact Urban Core

Undeveloped contexts are an unlikely pairing.

Modal hierarchy

Pedestrian= Bicycle
Pedestrian and Bicycle share top priority under this pattern's own equal-priority definition, no ranking between the two. Transit, Vehicle, and Freight do not apply off-street; Design Speed & Speed Limits doesn't apply here, since this pattern excludes automobiles entirely.

Design notes

Distinct from Bike Highway / Greenway (COL-BHG-04), which is bicycle-priority rather than equal-priority, and longer-distance than Shared-Use Path (LOC-SUP-13), with wayfinding and rest amenities mattering more at this length. Appropriate where the trail itself is a recreational or civic destination, not just a through-corridor. Where it runs parallel to a road for a meaningful stretch, see Road-Adjacent Greenway (CDR-RAG-05) for the corridor-scale relationship.1

Getting there: Retrofit path options

Barrier-crossing / network reconnection retrofit (RFT-NET-03) commonly takes this form where it crosses a highway, rail line, or disconnected cul-de-sac pattern.

References

  1. Legal / regulatory AASHTO, Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities, 5th Edition (2024).