There are two main components to this project. One of those (the most critical in my opinion) is to extend the Silver Comet down to the Chattahoochee River. The above image shows the path the trail will take. The other piece is to see the City of Atlanta complete a trail that improves the “bicycle experience” south of the river towards Atlanta.

The reason I emphasize the Cobb extension is just based on my experience trying to ride to the start of the Silver Comet, from downtown Atlanta. Atlanta’s trails get a good start towards the Silver Comet with the recently completed Woodall Rail Trail that enables a nice bicycle ride from downtown, up to Westside Park on offroad trails. From there, bicycle friendly roads (like Gun Club Road, Hollywood Road) make for easy/pleasant riding to Atlanta Road and then across the Chattahoochee. At that point there’s abruptly, no more trails or bicycle lanes. Your only choice is to ride on a busy 4-lane with fast traffic and no buffer next to the road. It’s enough to shut me down – not my idea of fun.

Those last couple miles to the Silver Comet

The south end of the Silver Comet currently ends close to the East-West Connector. This will be extended mainly by paving a previous CSX railroad corridor to facilitate offroad travel down to Church Road. From there, the trail continues as a sidepath to Atlanta Road and down to the Chattahoochee River.

See overview of the extension and more detail on segments

Extending towards the Beltline

Picking up at the Chattahoochee, the City of Atlanta has embraced a project that continues the trail from the river with a new offroad path under Marrieta Blvd to Standing Peachtree Park, and down to Marrietta Road.

The trail from the river to Marietta Blvd is a small part of plans for 100 miles of trails expected to take a couple decades to complete.

When will it be done?

Both the Silver Comet Extension, and connecting the Chattahoochee to downtown are expected to be complete by the end of 2025, hopefully well ahead of the 2026 World Cup. I’ve never been one to put an emphasis on “showing off” for sporting events, but whatever works! I’m reminded of the Summer Olympics in 1996 being a big motivator for many to complete the Stone Mountain Trail nearly 30 years ago. Atlanta had virtually no good bicycle trails before that. What a transformation it’s been since then!

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Railroads were designed to be out of sight, and with minimal interruption to pedestrians and street traffic. Quite a lot of expensive construction and landscaping went into that, more and more as you get into most densely populated areas. Ask yourself while driving through Atlanta and nearby, where do you sit and wait for trains to pass? Not a lot of places I’d imagine. But trains are getting around nonetheless. Freight trains remain an important part of our transportation grid. As population density goes up, trains more often go over dedicated bridges. When it goes up more, the trains in Atlanta usually go under the roads thru tunnels. If you’re looking ahead of you, you don’t even know they’re there. While railroads remain important, their role has certainly declined from it’s heyday in the early to mid-1900s. Economic realities in the changing landscape of transportation technology have resulted in more and more rail lines getting abandoned and left just sitting there.

While that opens a “land of opportunity” for me as a bicyclist riding the repurposed lines, happiness is not the only emotion I’m left with. My family was instrumental in helping build up railroads from the early days, to their rise in both passenger and freight transportation, and ultimately their decline, as trucks, automobiles, air travel, and (as always) water transport dominated. My father, Robert Stovall Jr, was the president of the Columbus and Greenville (C&G) railroad company. His father, Robert Stovall Sr, was the president before him, and his father, Adam Tonquin Stovall founded the C&G. I came along when railroads were in decline. My first employment was at the railroad when I was ten years old. Most of what I remember about that is unloading railcars used to transport damaged groceries (like dented cans of food or bags or flour busted open). The C&G would sell this food to farmers to feed their livestock, and I was there to help load it for them. Ultimately the C&G was sold to Illinois Central in about 1972, as they couldn’t continue given the economic conditions, as small operations like ours got bought up in big mergers.

But today I’m out on my bicycle, and feeling a special kinship with the railroad as I ride the Southside Beltline Trail towards downtown Atlanta. Guthrie’s song rings in my head as I cruise along, rolling past houses, farms, and fields. Riding mile after mile, the landscape and views change constantly. There’s no need to hurry or get out of anybody’s way. The scenery includes riding alongside the backyards of neighborhoods, the backside of factories and other industry, and with a up-close and personal view of city infrastructure like big powerplants and other stuff you’re not meant to see. The advertising you see is not there for you. It’s a show of pride by the small business owners that built that place. In some cases what you see ahead might as well be rural. And all the while, you breeze past big and small roads and interstates as though they’re not even there, increasingly thru long tunnels that seem like they were all constructed just for your enjoyment. They were in fact built at great monetary cost and labor that was expended for a completely different reason of course. There’s something sort perfect about that for me. A chance to be both sad and happy, and with uninterrupted solitude in which to experience that to the fullest.

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That’s why I was delighted to find this area yesterday when I was running an errand down to Atlanta Cycling for some parts. I haven’t been this far up the beltline since before covid, and yesterday I saw that a critical section of the beltline now takes you over the I-85/Buford Hwy interchange north of Piedmont Park! Historically, this has been the end of the Beltline, and really it only goes a few hundred feet further now, but this little stretch makes all the difference if you’re on a bike. Otherwise all the options for crossing the interstate include big roads and heavy car traffic.

When I made it across the freeway, I was sitting in an industrial park. No bike path, but no traffic either. Not a single car anywhere. What I found back here as I rode around is that there’s an area where you can make a loop, after riding Armour Drive across the railroad tracks, as it circles around an area that’s “land locked” on all sides, severely limiting travel and development. The area is bordered by the interstate, railroads and Marta, and Peachtree Creek.

There are a handful of manufacturing businesses back there, no places where you would expect retail to the public. While it’s not a bike path, it might as well be. On a Saturday I didn’t encounter a single car. Back on a corner that almost touches Peachtree Creek, I walked back there and found an overlook and (rather steep) trail that leads down to the creek. I was expecting this to be kind of trashy in such an area but found the creek to be very clean, well kept and pretty.

Pictures from the ride…click on image for exploded view

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That’s why I haven’t been posting here much especially about riding bicycles. I’ve been pretty busy including a lot of physical therapy. As of this week, I’m finally back on the bicycle and loving it! When I started my physical therapy I couldn’t send my feet around even one revolution of the pedals. It’s been slow going recovering my range of motion. Where I am today is a real delight!

At this point every ride is a little painful till I get used to spinning my pedals and bending that bad knee, but the pain subsides more and more if I warm up slowly. Having an e-bike definitely helps manage my effort. I took my first ride a few days ago. Ironically, it’s done nothing but rain every day since. But I did ride yesterday afternoon. Initially I was again staying right close by in the neighborhood. I’m building up my confidence slowly – I want to make sure I’ll save myself with my healing leg if I need to. But after riding around the block a few times I went into some adjacent areas including taking a nice ride thru Dearborn Park. When I got home I saw I’d been six miles!

My abilities and endurance will suffer for a while. The doctor says it may be another year before I’m able to run again. But it’s so nice to be back on the bicycle! I can again make this an important part of nearly every day. And I can tell it will naturally just get easier.

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Starting at the northern most point near the soon-to-open Westside Reservoir Park, I’m getting on the trail at the first opportunity and heading south.

The end-points of what’s open today

To get to the northern-most point you can access today to where the railroad tracks cross Law Street below.

The southern most access point for what’s open today is shown below where the rail crosses Joseph E. Boone Blvd, just west of Luckie Street.

More about this trail on the Path Foundation Website.

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Here are a few pictures along the way…

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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.

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What a nice morning dew on everything. The weather couldn’t be better lately.

There’s a big field on the way to the lake with growth as tall as me now. Very diverse. The dew is dripping from the flowers.

This is the highlight of Apollo‘s day – he says hello He’s also very curious why the grass is painted (he has no clue about the scheduled cross country race).

Pictures

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The trail goes beside Panola Mountain State Park and then on to Arabia Mountain and beyond. Most of the trail meanders through the woods not even in eyesight of a road. It’s mostly pretty level. There’s some moderate climbing in only a couple spots up at Arabia.

I especially love all the nature and moving water on this ride.

I did come up on what almost blocked the trail but not quite

Lot’s of good hiking trails to various destinations all around.

After playing around at Arabia I continued the trail west.

The trail ends at Lithonia. There are good biking roads around though and Lithonia has a nice downtown with places to eat etc.

From Lithonia it’s a pretty decent ride on roads about 25 miles home

Interactive Map – Panola Mountain to Lithonia by way of Arabia Mountain

Picture Gallery

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