Metropolitan Branch Trail

The Metropolitan Branch Trail, also called the Met Branch Trail, is an 8-mile (13 km) planned rail trail will run from the Silver Spring, Maryland Transit Center to Union Station in the District of Columbia. It serves to extend the Capital Crescent Trail where it merges with the active WMATA/CSX railroad into the National Capital. At Fort Totten a connector trail to the Northwest Branch Trail of the Anacostia Tributary Trail System at Hyattsville, Maryland will be constructed; and an on-street connection to the National Mall will be constructed from Union Station. When completed, the Metropolitan Branch Trail will serve as part of the East Coast Greenway.

Seven miles of the trail are within Washington, DC and one mile (1.6 km) is in Maryland. The trail gets its name from the Metropolitan Subdivision of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), which the trail parallels. The remainder of the trail closely parallels the current WMATA/CSX tracks into Maryland. It is anchored by two significant railroad landmarks, Union Station and the old B&O Railroad Station in Silver Spring.

History

The Metropolitan Branch Trail was first conceived in 1988, by Patrick Hare, of the Brookland neighborhood. Working with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) and Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in 1989, Hare organized a group of eleven area cyclists to conduct an exploratory walk/ride. Soon after, motivated by CSX's plans to develop the Eckington Rail Yard needed for the trail,^[1] the Coalition for the Metropolitan Branch Trail was formed to explore and promote the potential for a multi-use trail. Prior to that the trail was sometimes called the 'Dome to Dome Trail' because it would connect the Capital Dome and the Catholic University dome. The Metropolitan Branch Trail entered the DC Comprehensive Plan in the early 1990s and in 1997 the DC Department of Public Works (DPW) completed an engineering feasibility study that proved it would be possible.

Planning of the trail began in 1998 after Congress allocated $8.5 million in demonstration project funding to the District for the trail through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), the six-year federal transportation funding bill. The concept plan for the trail which envisioned creation of a large urban park and greenway along the abandoned, and as yet undeveloped, CSX Transportation property was published by WABA in 1999. In April 2001, WABA published a study describing the necessary acquisitions for the trail. In 2002,^[2] when the city and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) agreed to construct a new Metro station at New York and Florida Avenues, trail advocates and city staff negotiated for WMATA to construct a portion of the trail as a part of the station construction project. Around the same time the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) completed a Feasibility Study and Concept Plan for one mile of the MBT between DC and Silver Spring. In 2003, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) hired a special project manager for the trail, prepared a Takoma Alignment Study and initiated development of the comprehensive concept plan, which was completed in 2005.^[3]

Even as the planning was on-going, work was underway in the District. In 1998, a nearly one mile long segment was built by the District Department of Transportation next to Catholic University along John McCormack Road as part of routine road maintenance. Built with $1.9 million of federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ), it became the first piece constructed.^[4] On October 21, 1999 the trail was named one of 50 Millennium Trails at a White House ceremony featuring First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater. Five days later, on October 26, 1999, a formal ribbon cutting ceremony was then held at the Brookland-Catholic University Metro station near the first 0.9 mile portion of the trail along John McCormack Road.^[5] It was attended by 8 members of Congress, Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater and representatives of NHTSA, FHWA and the DC government.^[6] Another short, on-road trail section was built along First Street NE from Union Station in 2000. When the New York Ave–Florida Ave–Gallaudet University Metro station opened in November 2004, it included about 2,000 feet (610 m) of trail on a raised structure. Stairs from the New York Avenue Metro Station section to L Street NE, a trail under the tracks along L Street NE and a one block portion along 2nd Street NE were completed in the spring of 2008. The core of the trail, a 1.5-mile segment from New York Avenue to Franklin Street opened in November 2010.^[7] On July 9, 2013, a 500-foot-long section between Monroe Street and the CUA Metro station opened as part of the Monroe Street Market development. ^[8] On May 30, 2014, a ~2000 foot long section of the trail opened as a curb-protected, two-way bike lane along 1st Street NE from G Street NE to M Street NE.^[9] This was connected to the existing trail in November 2014 by a 572 foot long, protected bike lane on M Street,^[10] and then extended 812 feet south along 1st Street from G Street NE to the stub at Columbus Circle, NE on August 12, 2015.^[11] The Rhode Island Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, which connects the trail on the west side of the extant railroad tracks with the Rhode Island Avenue Metro Station on the east side, opened on December 31, 2014 after more than 15 months of work.^[12]

Work was going on in Maryland too. On July 28, 2004, a bridge was complete from the Takoma Park section over the railroad tracks to Jessup Blair Park in Silver Spring. In the same year, a half mile of trail was built in Takoma Park, Maryland from the District line to Montgomery College. It was later paved in January 2006. In February 2013, a section opened from Colesville Road to Ripley Street in Silver Spring, MD as part of the Silver Spring Transit Center.^[13]

Right-of-way

A substantial segment of the original Metropolitan Branch right-of-way south of Franklin Street NE (in some places, 200 feet wide) was originally marked as an extension of Delaware Avenue under the L'Enfant Plan. It was converted into railroad sidings for industrial uses on Capitol Hill in the late 19th-early 20th century, parallel to B&O railroad.

The Metropolitan Branch sidings became disused as industrial applications left the city, and the owner, CSX, which had already sold the active B&O railroad tracks within the District to the Washington Metro under a joint use agreement, made plans to redevelop many of the properties along the right-of-way, leaving it as a staging ground for temporary construction uses. During this period, the wide, grassy strip became a popular short-cut for pedestrians and cyclists trying to access the new Red Line which runs along the corridor.

Initially, WMATA engineered the Red Line to accommodate existing railroad uses in the corridor, bisecting the existing rail line and preserving many of the Metropolitan Branch sidings. In 1988, a decade after WMATA purchased and widened the active tracks, Montgomery County, Maryland purchased the Georgetown Branch of the B&O, a single track spur feeding into the Metropolitan Branch from the north, for transportation use including an extension of the Capital Crescent Trail.^[14] The remaining disused portions of the Metropolitan Branch spanned the distance parallel to the Red Line between the Georgetown Branch and Union Station, including sizable gaps north of Franklin Street, where the railroad had been widened by WMATA; the only available right-of-way for a trail in these areas was on adjacent parkland, or streets parallel to the railroad tracks.

Subsequent alterations to the Metropolitan Branch Trail route have reduced the amount of right-of-way acquisition by placing substantial portions of the proposed trail on-street, while retaining a continuous off-street trail between Franklin Street and the New York Ave–Florida Ave–Gallaudet University Metro station.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Metropolitan Branch Trail.

External links

• Metropolitan Branch Trail - official site (DC Department of Transportation)
• Northwest Branch Trail - Montgomery County Department of Parks
• Silver Spring Trails

Coordinates: 38°54′23.7″N 77°0′12.4″W / 38.906583°N 77.003444°W / 38.906583; -77.003444

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