The Path Foundation has been steadily making progress on new trails. The map shown above outlines the planned extension to the Silver Comet trail, recently approved by The Georgia Board of Natural Resources…
Board members unanimously approved agreements with Cobb County, the state Department of Transportation and the Forest Park-based nonprofit PATH Foundation to add 2.3 miles onto the eastern end of the trail, taking it inside the Interstate 285 perimeter for the first time.
capitol-beat.org
The trail crosses very busy infrastructure with what promises to be a safe and pleasant bicycle trail. Once completed, you can completely skip busy roads and interchanges like South Cobb Drive and I-285! This goes a long way towards ultimately joining the Silver Comet with the Atlanta Beltline and Centennial Olympic Park!
As recently as May of this year workers were still busy pulling up abandoned railroad track to make a place for the trail. This adds another 2.4 miles to the Silver Comet, moving its endpoint closer to the city of Atlanta. With this one new section cyclists get to ride under the East-West Connector, South Cobb Drive, and Interstate-285. Judging from the video fly-over below I’d say they’ve made quite a lot of progress this summer. It looks like a whole lot of it is about ready for concrete 🙂
Virtual Ride
Checkout this cool video that shows the trail in a nearly complete state.
Remaining Distance to the Beltline
Once this section is complete, another extension would be necessary to finally reach the beltline from the Silver Commit. This extension will also include crossing the Chattahoochee. Until then, google maps has the recommended bike path from Piedmont Park to the newly proposed start of the Silver Comet as shown below.
What comes next after this extension opens?
The next big section planned for the trail will extend it to the Chattahoochee River. Watch developments with recent TSPLOST funding being pursued given engineering approval for this project.
Read the Path Newsletter
The winter newsletter has some pretty pictures and a nice write-up about the project.