Capital Crescent Trail: Connecting DC by bike
Washington loves to bike, particularly suburbanites who hate driving. So it only makes sense that the Capital Crescent Trail would lead people from Bethesda to Georgetown without ever having to go through a stop light. One of the nation's most popular rail trails, and ranked the most traveled on, Capital Crescent is 11 miles long one-way and popular year-round with bikers, runners, and families.
The trail starts in Lyttonsville Junction, about 1.6 miles west of Silver Spring. It is an unpaved path of crushed gravel until Bethesda, where it then travels south along Little Falls Parkway. A fun breakaway is to take the Little Falls path through the winding woods and back onto the trail again. The trail continues past Fort Sumner, a Civil-war fort, and then runs parallel along the Potomac River and the C&O canal. Riders will pass upscale neighborhoods, old rail bridges, cherry blossom trees in spring, a paddling section of the Potomac, and other nature views not seen from the road. More than a million people travel this trail every year.
The trail is particularly pretty in spring, when the blossoms are out, and fall, when the leaves turn bright shades of color and create a quintissential picture-perfect autumn postcard. The trail is slightly less crowded in the hot, humid months, though it will always have its fair share of travelers, especially on weekends. There's actually rush hour on the trail, though it will never be as congested as the roads, and riders are cautioned to maintain safe speeds due to the volume of travelers.
HelloMetro Tip: Currently plans are underway to extend the trail to the Silver Spring Metro. For some time, there was controversy over the removal of the Capital Crescent Trail and turning it into a purple line light rail, connecting the Maryland suburbs towards Georgetown. Currently, the plan is to rebuild the Capital Crescent Trail next to the light rail line up into Silver Spring. As this is Washington, there's an active community of advocates fighting for the trail who meet regularly a the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail.
Posted by Rin-rin Yu
