Prince George’s County Council approved a measure calling for the completion of the planned Capital Trails Network of hiker-biker paths throughout the county.
The Capital Trails Network is the brainchild of the Capital Trails Coalition, a group of local government agencies, businesses and nonprofits that push for increased investments in trail infrastructure in the Washington region.
The network plan itself calls for a near-doubling of the amount of hiker-biker trails in the D.C. region, which includes the capital city, plus Prince George’s, Arlington, Fairfax, and Montgomery counties and the city of Alexandria. Currently, the region has 479 miles of trails. The Capital Trails Network plan calls for the construction of 402 miles of additional trails.
Most of those planned trails are also focused on Prince George’s County. The network plan calls for 242 miles of new trails here, up from roughly 90 miles of hiker-biker trails that currently exist in the county.
“The Capital Trails Network, if expanded in Prince George’s County, will broaden transit options and employment opportunities,” said County Councilor Dannielle Glaros. “Our residents want and deserve access to trails and open space, not only for leisure activities, but for the environmental and health benefits as well.”
As Route 1 Reporter has noted before, the vast majority of Prince George’s County’s hiker-biker trail network is concentrated in the northern end of the county. The rest of the county has to suffer with much-less robust hiker-biker facilities.
Some of the more-notable trail plans in Prince George’s County include the extension of the Rhode Island Trolley Trail to Beltsville, plans to extend the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail to the D.C. line, and plans to build a trail along Piscataway Creek.