Talking about projects like the CDT, Mountains-to-Sea Trail, etc, that are new but have community/state backing?
I was exploring the other day on my offline maps app and realized you could build a trail to fairly closely follow the course of the New River (3rd oldest river in the world) from its start in Boone (a Carolina mountain town with a college and many outdoorsy folk) and take it through to the New River Gorge, passing through Blacksburg and a whole lot of rural NC, VA, and WV. Total length is ~400-450km (250-280mi).
Is the main issue access to property? Manpower in establishing the trail itself? Community buy-in? What does it take to really get these projects going? If someone was really dedicated, how would they go about making something like this happen?
There is a small section of this trail that already exists, it's called the "New River Trail," and goes for 57mi (93km) or so in Virginia.
Here's a rough map of the waypoints; purple is trail and green is potential resupply: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnorfy36jqn9tw6/New%20River%20Trail.zip?dl=0