Trails promote safe and livable communities.
- Make convenient, safe, non-motorized travel throughout the community possible;
- Reduce crime through regular use and high visibility of users;
- Connect communities to parks, schools, shopping and other neighborhoods;
- Provide affordable exercise and recreational opportunities close to home;
- Provide opportunities to meet your neighbors.
Trails improve opportunities for children.
- Provide places for quality family time close to home;
- Encourage and provide opportunities for exercise;
- Create positive life- long experiences;
- Teach respect and stewardship of the environment and the community.
Trails protect the environment.
- Protect important habitat;
- Provide corridors for people and wildlife;
- Prevent soil erosion and filter pollution;
- Help reduce the cost of repairing flood damage.
Trails increase property values.
- In a survey of metro-Denver real estate agents, 73 percent of the agents believed a home near a trail would be easier to sell;
- A survey of homeowners living adjacent to a trail showed 29 percent felt their property value would increase and 57 percent felt their home would sell more quickly because of the trailside location;
- A 1998 study of property values along the Mountain Bay Trail in Brown County, Wisconsin showed that lots adjacent to the trail sold faster and for an average of 9% more than similar property not located next to the trail.
Trails are Important to Home Buyers.
- Trails ranked as the second most important community amenity in the 2002 Home Buyers Survey, conducted by the National Association of Hom Builders.
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