UT Tyler’s Desire Paths: Walking Your Way
Students using a "desire path" to avoid a hill.
By LARRY BONILLA/Staff Writer
Group of students walking on “Rooty Road.”
Suppose you’ve frequently had to walk across campus to reach your classes. In that case, you have probably seen or even used our local “Desire Paths” but may never have identified them before. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a Desire Path “is an unplanned route or path that is used by pedestrians in preference to or in the absence of a designated alternative.” They typically seem like dirt trails and are occasionally accompanied by patches of trampled grass.
Desire Paths are phenomenona that exist all over the world. As long as there are people who need to go places, these paths find their way to appear. Desire Paths can be found in places like parks, where the designed path may not reflect the walking habits of park visitors. However, most Desire Paths are found on college campuses because of the amount of foot traffic that goes on in a day. On some occasions, some Universities even incorporate these paths into the campus layout.
Student walking on “Turtle Trail.”
A famous Desire Path is directly between the Southern Ratliff Building and the southern tip of the HPR Building. It is a dirt path that runs parallel to Harvey Lake. Because this path is surrounded by shady trees, the roots often make the path rocky, giving it the name “Rooty Road.” Another is between the Muntz Library and the Southern Ratliff Building. This one runs along the northern edges of the upper lake, and because of its proximity to the life in the pond, it is called “Turtle Trail.”
One should note that these Desire Paths exist for a good reason. One such reason is that they do create a more direct/faster route. Even if you only reduce your commute by a minute or two, sometimes every second counts.
This is not the only benefit to using these paths; there are reasons to use them beyond reducing your time spent walking. For instance, Rooty Road is preferable because of the shade provided by trees during the warmer months. The path designed by the school, which is only a few feet away from the dirt path, is considerably more exposed to sunlight. In this case, Rooty Road is not only convenient but is also worthwhile in order to evade the heat.
A benefit of using Turtle Trail could be avoiding a hill’s incline. The path the school designed between the Muntz Library and Ratliff building has an incline, which is fine when you are going down but quite the workout going uphill. Aside from helping walkers avoid the incline, Turtle Trail also gives students the opportunity to get a closer look at the life in the pond.
Students walking on “Rooty Road.”
However, these paths may be convenient, but they are not totally accessible. For example, Rooty Road is — well — “rooty.” Because of the trees that provide shade, roots make the path considerably rugged. With so many roots, there is a bit of ambiguity concerning where the path starts and ends, so oftentimes, Rooty Road branches off at different points to the university-designed path. Turtle Trail is less uneven, but it still suffers from similar issues.
Despite these flaws, their purpose outweighs the alternative. These two Desire Paths are perfect avenues to efficiently reach your destination in time, to keep under shade, to avoid the incline of a hill or even just to get a little closer to the pond wildlife.
These Desire Paths likely weren’t thought of when the University designed the campus. The paths showed up because of students like you, who were just trying to walk to class. Among all the things you may accomplish at UT Tyler, you can leave your mark by simply using these Desire Paths.