Extending the Mount Vernon Trail North to the Beltway

The Park Service recently released a study of the feasibility of extending the popular Mount Vernon Trail, as a  result of advocacy over the past decade by members of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and the Virginia Bicycling Federation.

A well traveled route along the Potomac River, the Mount Vernon Trail takes bicyclists, joggers and hikers from Roosevelt Island near Key Bridge to George Washington's home in Mount Vernon (now Fairfax County), Va. The route affords riders beautiful vistas of the Potomac River and of the national memorials, the U.S. Capitol and the National Cathedral.

If the trail were extended north, you could ride,  jog or walk  all the way to the American Legion Bridge. The proposed extension would follow the streets of North Arlington for several miles, just as the existing trail stays on the streets in Old Town. For bicyclists, the sixty-mile round-trip would take a whole day. 

The trail extension proposal was in part born out of cyclists’ frustration at the difficulty of biking between the adjacent communities of Arlington and McLean. No safe cycling route exists within two miles of the river in this part of northern Virginia. Extending the Mount Vernon Trail would provide a logical solution to this problem.

Extension of the Mount Vernon Trail upstream from Key Bridge through the palisades area of the Potomac River has been viewed as problematic by the National Park Service for engineering and safety reasons. While the parkway right of way upriver from Chain Bridge is amply wide to include a paved multi-use trail, the section between Key and Chain Bridges arguably is not. The Park Service recently released a study of the feasibility of extending the popular Mount Vernon Trail, as a  result of advocacy over the past decade by members of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and the Virginia Bicycling Federation.
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