A lot of universities with large campus grounds take the approach of observing the natural foot traffic wear patterns on grassy areas, and then build walkways where the most worn down parts are.

Its… pretty obvious.

If everyone is taking an alternate, non designed path… your design sucks, modify it to facilitate what people find more effective.

Pretty sure the user experience folk are screaming for a path to be built there but are getting ignored.

Whenever that happens, the design is wrong.

Designers need to wake up and realize their job is to understand what the user wants not what they saw in a wet dream.