Engineers generally think like engineers, so this trail being awkward is hardly a surprise. Their minds tend to think a certain way so they tend to forget the human aspect of things when it comes to design. You can see the dichotomy of this when it comes to software design, too. In fact, it was largely thanks to the architect Christopher Alexander who influenced software design through his approach to architecture to become much more human focused. For the longest time, software design was awful and it made using it - for the general population - was highly cumbersome and annoying. It wasn't until recently that UX design became an ever more important aspect of software design because with the proliferation of devices being so ubiquitous that software companies needed to ensure their software could be easily understood and pleasing for users to utilize.
There's definitely a lot to criticize about this trail. The weird 90 degree angles, the fact the exit is behind a rapid transit station, that it comes out on an incredibly busy and very pedestrian unfriendly intersection, that it just exits on a busy sidewalk and so much more. But, I can understand why this is the result. Engineers just suck at thinking about human aspect of design. This sort of stuff ought to be designed by landscape architects, while letting engineers manage the boring nonsense like where to put bricks or what angle to build a ramp on.
There's definitely a lot to criticize about this trail. The weird 90 degree angles, the fact the exit is behind a rapid transit station, that it comes out on an incredibly busy and very pedestrian unfriendly intersection, that it just exits on a busy sidewalk and so much more. But, I can understand why this is the result. Engineers just suck at thinking about human aspect of design. This sort of stuff ought to be designed by landscape architects, while letting engineers manage the boring nonsense like where to put bricks or what angle to build a ramp on.