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When avid cyclist Ed McBrayer helped start Atlanta’s PATH Foundation in 1991, the goal was for his city to have 25 miles of trails in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Today, PATH oversees a still-growing 110-mile trail system, including the Silver Comet, a 61.5-mile pathway through eight cities and three counties. Could East Baton Rouge Parish have something similar one day?

“You have a head start on what I had to deal with when I got to Atlanta,” McBrayer told about 65 people at BREC headquarters earlier this month.

McBrayer is something of an evangelist for “greenways,” which are linear parks that connect traditional parks and can be used by bikers and pedestrians for recreation or transportation. Trails tend to be at least 10 to 12 feet wide and made of asphalt or concrete.

McBrayer, whose introduction to green-ways occurred as the planning commissioner in Englewood, Colo., a Denver suburb, says trails improve a community’s health, economy and social well-being. BREC has initiated the Capital Areas Pathways Project in hopes of reproducing those benefits here.

When BREC held more than 100 public meetings about the future of the park system in 2004, trails were the most popular request, officials say, and they’re hoping to create greenways over local terrain and “blueways” for boating.

The idea has come up at least once before. In 1989, Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, now president and CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence in Baton Rouge, finished her master’s thesis proposing a linear park system for the parish. Local officials loved it so much they adopted it as part of the Horizon Plan, the parish’s land-use blueprint.

The National Parks Service, Sierra Club and East Baton Rouge Parish officials began meeting in 1989 to discuss how to build more and better bike and pedestrian trails, with Thomas’ thesis as guidance. The first potential path would have run from Baton Rouge Beach on Stanford Avenue along Bayou Duplantier to Highland Road Park, Thomas says, but the idea was derailed by a handful of area residents who said the trail could attract crime.

Victor Lebsock, greenway planner for Raleigh, N.C., says there are no statistics that show an increase or decrease in crime because of a trail.

“Crime is crime,” he says. “It’s everywhere. Trails are not a contributing factor.” If anything, advocates say having a trail might lead to less crime because more people are out and about.

Greenway networks aren’t built all at once. Raleigh has about 56 miles of trails, with two miles under construction and 18 more on the drawing board. Lebsock says there are corridors within the system that are as long as 10 miles, and the plan is for everything to eventually connect.

The Tammany Trace, Louisiana’s first rails-to-trails conversion, is a scenic 31-mile, multi-purpose recreational corridor that stretches from Covington through Abita Springs, Mandeville and Lacombe to Slidell.

While there are always a few concerns about crime or declining property values expressed by residents near a planned stretch of new trail, he says it’s hard to keep up with public demand.

“Everybody wants their own,” Lebsock says.

Lebsock says appraisers tell him being near a trail adds 4% to 10% to the value of a home. Officials in Chattanooga, Tenn., which has its own trail system, and in St. Tammany Parish, which began building the Tammany Trace in the early 1990s, agree that developers often use trail proximity as a selling point.

Suellen Elstrott, a Northshore Realtor, says being near a trail never hurts property values—and sometimes slightly improves value. Like any other amenity, it depends on the buyer.

“I’m not a golf course person, but some people would die to be on a golf course,” Elstrott says. “Generally speaking, (the Trace) has been great for the whole area. People like knowing it’s there.”

McBrayer says about a developer a week knocks on his door, hoping to build where the trails are going, and some are even willing to sacrifice land for a trail right-of-way.

“Developers will be the best friends of trails,” McBrayer says.

Irma Cry, St. Tammany’s business development liaison, says it’s hard to put a number on the value of the Tammany Trace to the parish’s business community. But she says there’s no doubt it has an impact, calling it “something every community needs to have.” The Trace had 192,385 users in 2006, according to Trace director Lisa Pratt Maddox.

“Economic development-wise, (the Trace) has been very helpful to us, and I think it will continue to be,” Abita Springs Mayor Louis Fitzmorris says. He says the Trace has helped revitalize his downtown, drawing more visitors to the Abita Brewing Company and other attractions.

The Falls River Trail is one of 34 greenway trails in North Carolina’s capital city. Raleigh has about 56 miles of trails, with two miles under construction and 18 more on the drawing board.

The connection between a popular microbrewery and a health-conscious pedestrian trial might seem counterintuitive, but Jenny McKechnie, a bartender at the Abita Brew Pub, says it’s not unusual for out-of-towners to come in off the Trace for a meal and a beer. She recalled a group of at least 40 bicyclists from across the country that just did so.

McBrayer says concerns from wealthy neighborhoods often boil down to race and class issues: “I don’t want those people behind my house.” He mentioned one group of wealthy residents who threw junk on a nearby trail in what must have been a pathetic attempt at sabotage. Conversely, he says trails can sometimes be a hard sell in poor neighborhoods, perhaps because residents have more pressing issues to deal with.

Ultimately, he says, trails lead to tighter-knit communities.

“It ties everybody back together until the area starts functioning as a neighborhood again,” McBrayer says.

Generally, once the first trail becomes available, the few naysayers can barely be heard over all the happy walkers and bikers, he says. That’s why picking the right path to start with is critical. It needs to be in an obvious location that will be popular right away. Securing right-of-ways is the trickiest part of the process, so abandoned railroads, edges of golf courses and existing parks, road shoulders and other strips of land already in the public domain are key.

BREC is planning a public meeting in late October to help select the first corridor. You can also go to capp‑online.org to get updates or post comments.

Ted Jack, BREC’s director of planning and engineering, says the system has about $4 million on hand to get started, which officials hope to leverage with federal matching funds. He says they’re working on a strategy to solicit donations from the private sector.

The PATH Foundation has raised tens of millions of dollars for trail construction over the years from public and private sources, and spends about $400,000 a year to manage and maintain the system, McBrayer says.