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Final update: the Milwaukee River Greenway is hereby declared the Best Urban Path in the United States! Sadly, it’s among those that I haven’t yet visited, a situation I’ll need to rectify. I’ve invited a few Greenway partisans to write a guest post about what makes it the best urban path in America – stay tuned.
This month, I’m running a Twitter contest to identify the best urban paths in the U.S. As American urbanists usually do, I’m grabbing one global concept and then ignoring anything of real substance I might learn from other countries. This is a World Cup of American urban paths.
After receiving nominations and doing my own research, I randomized a 52-nominee bracket. The contest will begin with two “play-ins” and then proceed with 48 nominees in 8 groups.
Each group contains one nominee in each category:
- Top-seeded nominees
- Waterfronts
- Rail trails
- Local flavor
- Greenways
- Long rides
The group stage will be a 5-game round robin of Twitter polls. Make sure to show up and vote for your team in Games 2 through 5 even if it loses Game 1 – this isn’t march madness.
Matches will last at least 20 hours of Twitter voting. Head-to-head matchup and then total margin of victory will be a tiebreaker if needed to determine group rankings.
Two nominees from each group will advance. Those 16 nominees will form a World Cup-style bracket. Two teams that advance from the same group will not meet again until the Final.
Play-ins
The first play in is a simple head-to-head matchup between Washington DC rail trails: the Capital Crescent versus the Metropolitan Branch Trail. The winner will be the Group F Rail Trail. (Northern Virginia’s W&OD Trail has already punched its ticket in the “Long Rides” category).
The “Underdog Play-in” will be a two-round bracket among four nominees on the bubble:
- Chehalis Western Trail (Olympia)
- East Bay Bike Path (Providence)
- Markell Trail (Wilmington DE)
- Decker’s Creek Trail (Morgantown WV)
Bonus contest
How many of the paths have you been on? My Twitter follower who reports the most wins Fan of the Year. Honor system, people.
Groups
In the World Cup, the home team gets a slot alongside the seven top seeds. The home team here is the Anacostia River Trails (Maryland), which anchors a light-hitting Group A:
| Top Seed | Anacostia River Trails (Maryland) |
| Waterfront | San Diego Embarcadero |
| Rail trail | Springwater Corridor (Portland OR) |
| Local flavor | Scioto Mile (Columbus) |
| Greenway | Midtown Greenway (Minneapolis) |
| Long ride | Jordan River Trail (Salt Lake City) |
Group B features the tournament’s top seed. For my money, a great urban path is not just well-engineered and equally popular with cyclists, dog walkers, joggers, and children, but also generates commerce and mixes commuting, recreation, tourism, and becomes a destination in itself. Our top seeded path has reoriented neighborhoods around itself and become a political touchstone in its city. A couple other amazing paths were drawn in, making this a clear “Group of Death.”
| Top Seed | Altanta BeltLine |
| Waterfront | Schuylkill River Trail (Philadelphia) |
| Rail trail | Burke-Gilman Trail (Seattle) |
| Local flavor | Cliff Walk (Newport RI) |
| Greenway | Capital Area Greenway (Raleigh) |
| Long ride | Cherry Creek Regional Trail (Denver) |
Group C is anchored by one of the most iconic places in the U.S. Formally it’s “Ocean Front Walk”, it encompasses the Venice Beach boardwalk, passes the Santa Monica pier, and extends south to Torrance State Beach.
| Top Seed | The Strand (Santa Monica, Venice, South Bay) |
| Waterfront | Butler Hike & Bike Trail (Lady Bird Lake, Austin) |
| Rail trail | Katy Trail (Dallas) |
| Local flavor | Lake Merritt Loop Trail (Oakland) |
| Greenway | Boise River Greenbelt |
| Long ride | W&OD Trail (VA) |
San Antonio’s River Walk (conceived 1929, born 1946) is the grandfather of many of the other spaces in this tourney, but have any equaled it? I visited it at age 10 — it was utterly captivating. The River Walk highlights Group D:
| Top Seed | San Antonio River Walk |
| Waterfront | Genesee Riverway Trail (Rochester) |
| Rail trail | Minuteman Bikeway (MA) |
| Local flavor | Underdog play-in winner |
| Greenway | Milwaukee River Greenway |
| Long ride | Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail (Sacramento) |
The luck of the =RAND() put New York’s High Line up against its brassy imitator, Chicago’s 606 for an elevated urban way battle in Group E:
| Top Seed | High Line (NYC) |
| Waterfront | Miami Beach Boardwalk |
| Rail trail | The 606 (Chicago) |
| Local flavor | Las Vegas Strip |
| Greenway | Shelby Bottoms Greenway (Nashville) |
| Long ride | Capital City State Trail (Madison) |
Group F is a mismatch between 3 major metros and 3 small cities:
| Top Seed | Embarcadero (San Francisco) |
| Waterfront | Lakefront Trail (Chicago) |
| Rail trail | DC play-in winner |
| Local flavor | Atlantic City Boardwalk |
| Greenway | Lafitte Greenway (NoLa) |
| Long ride | Swamp Rabbit Trail (Greenville SC) |
Like many of the nominees, Group G‘s top seed blurs the line between path and park. And Detroit’s Dequindre Cut emerged from the nominations on the short list of urban paths I most want to visit:
| Top Seed | Charles River Esplanade (Boston) |
| Waterfront | Canal Walk (Richmond) |
| Rail trail | Dequindre Cut (Detroit) |
| Local flavor | Waterfront Promenade (Baltimore) |
| Greenway | Buffalo Bayou (Houston) |
| Long ride | Paseo del Bosque Trail (Albuquerque) |
Our final sextet is chaotic good. Charlotte Rail Trail is a top-seeded nominee on the strength of @taylorrule’s tweet:
Charlotte’s rail trail transformed South End from a bunch of warehouses in 2008 into several miles of transit oriented development with tons of amenities and mixed uses. One of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the US, now home to 12K+ people
Besides a surprising top seed, Group H drew the Hudson River Greenway – on the Manhattan side – against the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway – side-eyeing it from Jersey. But I’d be voting for the Clear Creek Trail, where I walked upstream again and again this summer, just to float back down again.
| Top Seed | Charlotte Rail Trail |
| Waterfront | Hudson River Waterfront Walkway (NJ) |
| Rail trail | Monon Trail (Indianapolis) |
| Local flavor | Clear Creek Trail (Golden CO) |
| Greenway | Hudson River Greenway (NYC) |
| Long ride | Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail (Cleveland – Masillon) |
Results!
In addition to Twitter, I’ll post results here as they come in.
Play-in results:
- Metropolitan Branch Trail won the DC Rail Trail spot
- Chehalis Western Trail won the Underdog Play-in
Group stage results
11/14 game notes: tight game in Group C; Oakland held on for the win. Group D cheeseheads showed up with over 100 votes for Milwaukee River Greenway – suddenly a path to watch!
11/15 notes: Group G looks like it might be the most interesting, with a draw and two close matches in the first round.
11/16 notes: In a major upset, the BeltLine got trounced by the Schuylkill River Trail.
11/17 notes: low turnout leads to our first shutout, the Atlantic City Boardwalk won 6-0 over the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
Thanksgiving week notes: A set of matches posted Tuesday garnered lots of attention – another set posted Friday got the lowest turnout so far. Both had 2 days. Going into the final matches, just 5 paths have won all their matches – including both of Wisconsin’s entries.
11/28 notes: The Capital Area Greenway somehow achieves 3 draws in 5 matches, proof that this really is a World Cup bracket.
11/29 notes: Group F ends in a Condorcet triangle, a 3-way tie in which each team beat one of the other top 3. It was decided by average score, with a margin of just 0.08 points between Chicago’s 606 and Madison’s Capital City State Trail.
- Anacostia River Trails 68, Springwater Corridor 32
- San Diego Embarcadero 70, Scioto Mile 30
- Midtown Greenway 83, Jordan River Trail 17
- Anacostia River Trails 75, SD Embarcadero 25
- Midtown Greenway 62, Springwater Corridor 38
- Scioto Mile 50, Jordan River Trail 50
- Anacostia River Trails 82, Scioto Mile 18
- Jordan River Trail 88, Springwater Corridor 12
- San Diego Embarcadero 67, Midtown Greenway 33
- Midtown Greenway 78, Anacostia River Trails 22
- Springwater Corridor 60, Scioto Mile 40
- Jordan River Trail 59, San Diego Embarcadero 41
- Anacostia River Trails 62, Jordan River Trail 38
- Springwater Corridor 50, Embarcadero 50
- Scioto Mile 100, Midtown Greenway 0
Anacostia River Trails: 12 pts
Midtown Greenway: 9 pts
Jordan River Trail: 7 pts
San Diego Embarcadero: 7 pts
Springwater Corridor: 4 pts
Scioto Mile: 4 pts
- BeltLine 72, Burke-Gilman 28
- Schuylkill River Trail 59, Cliff Walk 41
- Cherry Creek Regional Trail 73, Capital Area Greenway 27
- Schuylkill River Trail 73, BeltLine 27
- Burke-Gilman Trail 50, Capital Area Greenway 50
- Cherry Creek Trail 71, Cliff Walk 29
- BeltLine 89, Cliff Walk 11
- Cherry Creek Trail 67, Burke-Gilman Trail 33
- Schuylkill River Trail 50, Capital Area Greenway 50
- BeltLine 64, Capital Area Greenway 36
- Burke-Gilman Trail 82, Cliff Walk 18
- Schuylkill River Trail 58, Cherry Creek Regional Trail 42
- BeltLine 58, Cherry Creek Regional Trail 42
- Burke-Gilman Trail 54, Schuylkill River Trail 46
- Cliff Walk 50, Capital Area Greenway 50
BeltLine: 12 pts
Schuylkill River Trail: 10 pts
Cherry Creek Regional Trail: 9 pts
Burke-Gilman Trail: 7 pts
Capital Area Greenway: 3 pts
Cliff Walk: 1 pt
- The Strand 71, Katy Trail 29
- Lake Merritt Loop Trail 52, Butler Hike & Bike Trail 48
- W&OD Trail 74, Boise River Greenbelt 26
- The Strand 88, Butler Hike & Bike Trail 12
- Katy Trail 56, Boise River Greenbelt 44
- Lake Merritt Loop Trail 76, W&OD Trail 24
- The Strand 86, Lake Merritt Loop Trail 14
- W&OD Trail 83, Katy Trail 17
- Butler Hike & Bike Trail 50, Boise River Greenbelt 50
- The Strand 60, Boise River Greenbelt 40
- Lake Merritt Loop Trail 75, Katy Trail 25
- W&OD Trail 53, Butler Hike & Bike Trail 47
- The Strand 71, W&OD Trail 29
- Butler Hike & Bike Trail 57, Katy Trail 43
- Lake Merritt Loop Trail 79, Boise River Greenbelt 21
The Strand: 15 pts
Lake Merritt Loop Trail: 12 pts
W&OD Trail: 9 pts
Butler Hike & Bike Trail: 4 pts
Katy Trail: 3 pts
Boise River Greenbelt: 1 pt
- River Walk 65, Minuteman Commuter Bikeway 35
- Genesee Riverway Trail 74, Chehalis Western Trail 26
- Milwaukee River Greenway 95, Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail 5
- River Walk 62, Genesee Riverway Trail 38
- Milwaukee River Greenway 85, Minuteman Commuter Bikeway 15
- Chehalis Western Trail 64, Jedediah Smith Trail 36
- River Walk 75, Chehalis Western Trail 25
- Minuteman Commuter Bikeway 100, Jedediah Smith Trail 0
- Milwaukee River Greenway 55, Genesee Riverway Trail 45
- Milwaukee River Greenway 64, River Walk 36
- Minuteman Commuter Bikeway 58, Chehalis Western Trail 42
- Jedediah Smith Trail 67, River Walk 33
- Minuteman Commuter Bikeway 69, Genesee Riverway Trail 31
- Milwaukee River Greenway 80, Chehalis Western Trail 20
Milwaukee River Greenway: 15 pts
River Walk: 9 pts (advances via head-to-head win in game 1)
Minuteman Commuter Bikeway: 9 pts
Genesee Riverway Trail: 6 pts
Chehalis Western Trail: 3 pts
Jedediah Smith Trail: 3 pts
- The 606 62, High Line 38
- Miami Beach Boardwalk 78, Las Vegas Strip 22
- Capital City Trail 89, Shelby Bottoms Greenway 11
- High Line 89, Miami Beach Boardwalk 11
- The 606 78, Shelby Bottoms Greenway 22
- Capital City Trail 67, Las Vegas Strip 33
- High Line 89, Las Vegas Strip 11
- Capital City Trail 74, The 606 26
- Miami Beach Boardwalk 57, Shelby Bottoms Greenway 43
- High Line 88, Shelby Bottoms Greenway 12
- The 606 67, Las Vegas Strip 33
- Capital City Trail 80, Miami Beach Boardwalk 20
- High Line 78, Capital City Trail 22
- The 606 100, Miami Beach Boardwalk 0
- Shelby Bottoms Greenway 67, Las Vegas Strip 33
High Line: 12 pts (avg score = 76.4)
The 606: 12 pts (avg score = 66.46)
Capital City State Trail: 12 pts (avg score = 66.38)
Miami Beach Boardwalk: 6 pts
Shelby Bottoms Greenway: 3 pts
Las Vegas Strip: 0 pts
- Metropolitan Branch Trail 71, Embarcadero 29
- Lakefront Trail 69, Atlantic City Boardwalk 31
- Lafitte Greenway 68, Swamp Rabbit Trail 32
- Embarcadero 50, Lakefront Trail 50
- Metropolitan Branch Trail 78, Lafitte Greenway 22
- Boardwalk 100, Swamp Rabbit Trail 0
- Embarcadero 62, Boardwalk 38
- Metropolitan Branch Trail 80, Swamp Rabbit Trail 20
- Lakefront Trail 90, Lafitte Greenway 10
- Lafitte Greenway 67, Embarcadero 33
- Metropolitan Branch Trail 77, Boardwalk 23
- Lakefront Trail 86, Swamp Rabbit Trail 14
- Embarcadero 67, Swamp Rabbit Trail 33
- Metropolitan Branch Trail 73, Lakefront Trail 27
- Boardwalk 62, Lafitte Greenway 38
Met Branch Trail: 15 pts
Lakefront Trail: 10 pts
Embarcadero: 7 pts
Lafitte Greenway: 6 pts
Boardwalk: 6 pts
Swamp Rabbit Trail: 0 pts
- Charles River Esplanade 59, Dequindre Cut 41
- Canal Walk 52, Waterfront Promenade 48
- Buffalo Bayou 50, Paseo del Bosque 50
- Charles River Esplanade 79, Canal Walk 21
- Buffalo Bayou 60, Dequindre Cut 40
- Waterfront Promenade 60, Paseo del Bosque 40
- Charles River Esplanade 83, Waterfront Promenade 17
- Dequindre Cut 60, Paseo del Bosque 40
- Canal Walk 50, Buffalo Bayou 50
- Charles River Esplanade 71, Buffalo Bayou 29
- Waterfront Promenade 75, Dequindre Cut 25
- Canal Walk 100, Paseo del Bosque 0
- Charles River Esplanade 88, Paseo del Bosque 12
- Canal Walk 53, Dequindre Cut 47
- Waterfront Promenade 58, Buffalo Bayou 42
Esplanade: 15 pts
Canal Walk: 10 pts
Waterfront Promenade: 9 pts
Buffalo Bayou: 5 pts
Dequindre Cut: 3 pts
Paseo del Bosque: 1 pt
- Charlotte Rail Trail 62, Monon Trail 38
- Hudson Waterfront Walkway 93, Clear Creek Trail 7
- Hudson River Greenway 75, Towpath Trail 25
- Charlotte Rail Trail 90, Hudson Waterfront Walkway 10
- Monon Trail 56, Hudson River Greenway 44
- Towpath Trail 57, Clear Creek Trail 43
- Charlotte Rail Trail 70, Clear Creek Trail 30
- Monon Trail 50, Towpath Trail 50
- Hudson Waterfront Walkway 70, Hudson River Greenway 30
- Hudson River Greenway 57, Charlotte Rail Trail 43
- Monon Trail 50, Clear Creek Trail 50
- Hudson Waterfront Walkway 75, Towpath Trail 25
- Charlotte Rail Trail 75, Towpath Trail 25
- Hudson Waterfront Walkway 75, Monon Trail 25
- Hudson River Greenway 100, Clear Creek Trail 0
Charlotte Rail Trail: 12 pts
Hudson Waterfront Walkway: 12 pts
Hudson River Greenway: 9 pts
Monon Trail: 5 pts
Towpath Trail: 4 pts
Clear Creek Trail: 1 pt
