Users of a future trail to connect the Arlington View neighborhood across I-395 to Crystal City may find themselves huffing and puffing unless they take it easy.
The route will require pedestrians and bicyclists to go “over the mountain range” to get from one end to the other, noted David Patton, a transportation planner for the Department of Environmental Services, during a Dec. 16 presentation to the county’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
The route will have grades that could challenge users on both the upslope and downslope.
“It’s not just a simple trail — it’s a challenging, challenging site,” said Patton, describing what is now known as the Arlington View Connector Trail.
The project, which has been in the works since at least 1994 only to encounter multiple delays, is funded and has reached the 60% design phase.
A number of previous routings were rejected, one because it traveled over even steeper terrain, a second because a proposal to cut a trench through the hillside and buttress it with 20-foot walls was seen as too draconian.
The current design option is perhaps the best possible, Patton said. Preliminary design work has been done by Hord Coplan Macht.
“This was such a puzzle to figure out,” Patton said. “I think the process has been done as well as it could.”
But there are still limitations along the route, a route that includes land owned by Army Navy Country Club. An easement for use of the property was provided to the county government as part of negotiations allowing the club to build a new clubhouse.
That agreement caused an internal battle among club members in 2010.
The trail’s route would start at 13th Street S. and S. Pierce Street near Hoffman-Boston Elementary School, then hug I-395 on the country club’s land before crossing the interstate and connecting to Army Navy Drive.
The planned trail would provide Arlington View residents a connection to the National Landing area — including Crystal City and Pentagon City — on foot or by bicycle. Currently, the only entry and egress to the Arlington View neighborhood are via connections along Columbia Pike.
Members of the pedestrian-advisory panel were pleased the project was finally moving along, but sought specifics.
“When are we going to do this?” asked member Pamela Van Hine.
A final design is slated for 2025, with construction set to start in mid-2026, according to county staff.
The Arlington View project is part of a number of ongoing and planned trail projects criss-crossing the county, including the Crystal City Bike Network and a proposed but unfunded Long Bridge Park trail that ultimately will cross the Potomac into D.C.
Because of the somewhat steep grade, bicyclists will need to walk their bikes for parts of the Arlington View trail. Grooved ramps will be put in place to assist bicyclists and those pushing strollers.
“It’s not great,” Patton acknowledged of the slope, but is perhaps the best that could be managed under budget constraints.
Sometimes, Patton said, the natural surroundings win out over planners’ best efforts.
“There are times when the terrain is too challenging,” he said.
The 62 acres of the Arlington View neighborhood contain single-family and multi-family residential properties as well as medium-density apartment buildings.
Modern-day Arlington View can trace its lineage back to 1880, when the a white family began selling lots to African-Americans leaving the nearby Freedman’s Village.
It is located to the west of what had been Queen City, a thriving Black community that was razed in the early 1940s to make way for the transportation network supporting construction of the War Department building, now known as the Pentagon.
