"We ought to work as hard as we can to help the people who live there," Tony Marra told county officials in 2022. Marra chairs the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, the volunteer group that has tracked this stretch of pavement since before most current Bethesda residents moved in, and his point was simple: the reason to extend the trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring was never scenery. It was safety, for the students biking to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and the commuters who used to cross the county without a car.
Nine years after that section closed, the trail is tentatively coming back this fall. But the single crossing that made the old route dangerous in the first place, Wisconsin Avenue, isn't part of what reopens. That gap is worth understanding before you plan your first ride.
What Nine Years on Jones Bridge Road Actually Meant
The gravel section between Bethesda and Lyttonsville Junction closed in September 2017 to make way for Purple Line construction on the old Georgetown Branch right-of-way. Since then, anyone who used to ride or walk that stretch has been rerouted onto Jones Bridge Road, a stretch that TrailLink's own trail notes describe as lacking a shoulder or a marked bike lane. That detour wasn't a minor inconvenience. County officials told the council in 2022 that the trail had served as a genuine commuter corridor for students traveling to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and adults commuting to work, not just weekend riders looking for a scenic loop.
That's the backdrop for why the reopening matters this fall. It's also why the exceptions to that reopening matter just as much.
The Trail Coming Back Isn't the Trail That Closed
What reopens this fall is not a restoration of the old gravel path. It's a different piece of infrastructure entirely. The new segment is a paved, 12-foot-wide trail with 2-foot buffers, built to run almost entirely grade-separated from the Purple Line tracks between Bethesda and downtown Silver Spring, according to the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail. That's a meaningful upgrade from the interim gravel trail, which topped out around 10 feet wide with no separation from cross traffic at several points.
The completed segment includes trail bridges over Connecticut Avenue and Colesville Road, plus underpasses at Jones Mill Road, 16th Street, and Spring Street, according to the Coalition. Once it reaches downtown Silver Spring, it connects directly to the Metropolitan Branch Trail at the Silver Spring Transit Center, tying together a network that Bethesda-side riders haven't had full access to since 2017.
The first physical proof that any of this was actually happening arrived back in May 2024, when a roughly 670-foot section opened across the new Talbot Avenue Bridge. It wasn't much distance, but it was the first stretch of new trail anyone could actually walk on after years of renderings and construction updates.
Here's how the two versions of the trail compare on paper:
| Interim Trail (pre-2017) | New Trail (2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | Gravel and dirt | Fully paved |
| Width | About 10 feet | 12 feet, with 2-foot buffers |
| Separation from Purple Line | None | Grade-separated for most of the route |
| Wisconsin Avenue crossing | At-grade street crossing | At-grade street crossing |
That last row is the point of this whole post.
The Reopening Date Has Already Moved Once This Year
Back in January 2026, MCDOT's Maricela Cordova told a council committee the department expected to be ready for "spring, summer of" 2026, once the Purple Line project finished construction and handed the trail over to county ownership. As of today, the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail's own site lists the reopening as tentative for fall 2026, with the Bethesda-to-Silver Spring section still closed and the official detour still in effect.
That's not a dramatic slip by the standards of this project, which was originally supposed to be finished around 2022 or 2023. But it's worth flagging for anyone timing a first ride on the new trail: the target has already drifted from spring to fall within a single calendar year, and the word "tentative" is doing real work in that sentence.
Why the Tunnel Isn't Part of the Deal
The trail segment reopening this fall is being funded and built separately from a tunnel that was originally supposed to carry trail traffic under Wisconsin Avenue, letting riders pass beneath one of downtown Bethesda's busiest intersections instead of crossing it on foot or by bike. The Montgomery County Council approved $54.9 million for that tunnel back in May 2020, according to the Washington Post at the time.
Six years later, the price has moved in the wrong direction. Bethesda Magazine reported in January 2026 that the tunnel's cost estimate has grown to more than $82.5 million and that the project has been, in the paper's words, in limbo since 2020 amid mushrooming cost estimates. The tunnel isn't included in the Purple Line costs the county is currently obligated to cover. The trail construction itself, without the tunnel, carries a projected cost of $64.3 million, which Cordova noted is about $18 million less than the tunnel alone would run.
Del. Marc Korman, who represents the district and chairs the House Environment and Transportation Committee, pushed back hard on the idea that the trail should wait for anything. He warned state officials in that same council hearing that they would "break faith with the community" if they let Purple Line passenger service begin before the trail reopened. Back in 2022, Friedson made a similar argument alongside fellow council members Hans Riemer and Tom Hucker, pushing to decouple the trail's reopening from the light rail line itself, which the Maryland Transit Administration still expects to carry passengers in late 2027, more than a year after the trail is supposed to reopen.
In other words, county officials fought to make sure your walk or bike ride doesn't have to wait for the trains. Nobody has managed the same fight for the crosswalk at Wisconsin Avenue.
What Actually Changes for a Wisconsin Avenue Crossing
Here's the practical answer, based on what's actually built today. Montgomery County DOT already completed a set of protected bike lanes, called the Capital Crescent Surface Trail, running from the current trailhead at Ourisman Plaza on Bethesda Avenue across Wisconsin Avenue to Elm Street Park. That surface trail includes marked bicycle crossing lanes and signals at Bethesda and Woodmont Avenues and at Wisconsin Avenue itself, and the Coalition describes it as feeling safe even for less experienced riders.
That's a real improvement over nothing. But it's still a street-level crossing with a signal, not the below-grade passage that was part of the original plan. Riders and walkers crossing Wisconsin Avenue this fall will still be crossing at street level through one of the busiest intersections downtown, the kind of exposure the original safety argument for the whole project was meant to eliminate.
There's a bit of irony worth sitting with here. The trail follows the old right-of-way of the Tennallytown and Rockville Railroad, a streetcar line that once ran trolleys along this same corridor from the 1890s until 1935. The rails disappeared decades ago. The traffic on Wisconsin Avenue didn't.
What Else Is Still Moving This Fall
If you commute through Bethesda by any mode, this is a season of overlapping construction rather than a single finish line. If you ride the Red Line, you likely just got a piece of your commute back. WMATA closed the Bethesda, Medical Center, and Grosvenor-Strathmore stations from July 6 through September 6 for Purple Line-related mezzanine construction, and the stations reopened on schedule September 7. Purple Line crews are still actively working elsewhere in the corridor this month, including paving operations on Wayne Avenue between Georgia Avenue and Flower Avenue and overnight closures near Georgia Avenue and Bonifant Street to install overhead wiring, according to the Purple Line project's own construction updates.
None of that changes the core picture for the trail. The paved connection between Bethesda and Silver Spring is tentatively close, the Talbot Avenue Bridge segment has already proven the new design works, and the link to the Metropolitan Branch Trail at the Silver Spring Transit Center will genuinely open up the county's trail network in a way it hasn't been since 2017. Just don't expect the Wisconsin Avenue crossing to feel any different than it does right now.
If you're new to the neighborhood and want a fuller picture of daily life here, from the trail network to what's changed on Bethesda Row, our Bethesda neighborhood guide is a good place to start. And if you're the kind of person who tracks projects like this one because you're already thinking about what's next for your own address, Rosie Tomlinson would love to hear from you. Let's Connect.
