Metropolitan Branch Trail

Once the site of the Eckington Rail Yard, this rail-to-trail system running eight miles from Silver Spring, Maryland, to Union Station in Washington, D.C., was conceived by a group of cyclists in the late 1980s. Rail company CSX had originally planned to develop the defunct railway line and junction in northeast D.C. into a multiuse office center, but a coalition led by local cyclists campaigned to set aside land for a trail system offering cycle and pedestrian access between downtown and the city’s northeast corridor, which lacked ample transportation links. In 1991 the District received $1.5 million from Congress to secure the land required to build the trail. The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, passed in 1998, allocated an additional $8.5 million for the project, allowing the District to begin construction. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association created a conceptual plan for a trail and greenway following both disused and active segments of the CSX rail lines into the District and passing through the city to downtown via protected bike lanes on low-traffic roads. The first mile-long segment was completed in November 1998, with further sections added during routine road maintenance work through the next five years. The core of the trail, running one-and-a-half miles from New York Avenue to Franklin Street, was completed in 2010 and connects previously constructed sections within the District. New segments of the trail continue to be added. In 2019 Alethia Tanner Park opened at the section of the trail between Q and R Streets NE, designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.