Originally Posted by genejockey

The thing about where I live is that it's pretty densely populated, and so the MUPs tend to be as well. I have noticed, on that 4-mile MUP I mentioned above, that foot traffic is inversely proportional to the distance from one end of the trail, so that when I DID ride on it, once I got past about 1 mile from the trail head it wasn't too bad. This trail doesn't allow dogs, but on another nearby MUP that does, I noticed that dog poop has a similar distribution pattern - inversely proportional to distance from trailhead.

I imagine an intercity bike trail would be similar, so that once you get out some distance the traffic is lighter and there are a lot fewer pedestrians, which might make it more tolerable, especially if the roads aren't amenable to bikes.