Help me find the best PCB design and why that is the one?
It's very unlikely that there's any design where one of these configurations would work and the other three would fail.

If you're designing this to carry a low speed, high current signal, then it would be better to either Move the two ends of the trace closer together (i.e. move R2 closer to PL1) or use a wider trace, or use a parallel trace on another layer, or ... If no other changes are possible, then possibly c is better than the other options, but more likely they'll either all fail or all work.

If you're designing to carry a high-speed signal, then it would be more important to be sure that your ground-plane beneath the trace is unbroken, that the trace width is correct to provide controlled impedance, that the trace-to-ground separation on the top layer is not affecting characteristic impedance, that the connectors are adequate for your frequency content, etc., etc., before worrying about the difference between the different trace paths.