Advocates for nature and bicyclists appear to be at odds on Fairfax County’s planned Cinder Bed Road Bikeway, but leaders on both sides still hope to find some areas of compromise.
At issue is “Segment 6,” the northern section of the bicycle/pedestrian trail proposed by Fairfax County transportation planners to connect Newington Road and the Franconia-Springfield Metro station.
Running seven-tenths of a mile, mostly through land owned by the Amberleigh Homeowners Association, Segment 6 contains a variety of sensitive ecology, and its construction would require two bridges to cross Long Branch — a concern of environmental advocates.
“We really need to protect the precious green corridors we have left,” said Renee Grebe, Northern Virginia conservation advocate for Nature Forward.
That group — formerly known as the Audubon Naturalist Society — joined others on May 6 for a 90-minute webinar focused on environmental threats posed by the planned 10-foot-wide lighted path. Activists are calling on Fairfax leaders to consider alternatives connecting the Metro station to the future trail, keeping about 10 acres of wetlands untouched.
If it’s disrupted by a trail, the ecosystem “won’t function the same way it used to,” Grebe said.
Other groups participating in the webinar included the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance, Friends of Accotink Creek, Sierra Club Great Falls Group, Virginia Native Plant Society and Friends of Little Hunting Creek.
Supporters of the trail were believed to be in the online audience and were invited to speak, but none opted to.
In follow-up conversations with FFXnow, two major advocates of the bikeway project said there are ways to achieve the goal of increased bicycle/pedestrian connectivity without doing major environmental damage.
“Designing a trail along Long Branch that minimizes impacts on the wildlife in the park seems entirely possible,” said Colin Browne, communications director for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA).
The Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling (FABB) holds a similar view.
“The Cinder Bed Trail is not a zero-sum game,” its board of directors said in a statement to FFXnow, contending that a well-conceived project could be “a win for the environment and people who rely on non-vehicular connections.”
“Negative impacts — like the routine flooding, erosion and invasive species the area experiences today — can be mitigated and corrected through careful planning and education,” the organization said.
But those opposed to Segment 6 say there are alternatives for bicyclists and pedestrians already in place, albeit in need of upgrades, if county leaders opt to use them.
“It wouldn’t take any longer” for most to use the alternate connections, said Philip Latasa of Friends of Accotink Creek.
Several participating in the May 6 webinar, however, seemed resigned that county officials have made up their minds to move forward on the planned routing.
“They are pretty committed,” said Betsy Martin, representing the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance.
Some land acquisition efforts are ongoing, but county officials have yet to start negotiating with the Amberleigh Homeowners Association to obtain the permanent easement necessary to construct Segment 6. If the association balks, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors could exercise its eminent-domain powers to obtain it.
“It really is going to depend very much on the HOA that owns the land,” Martin said. If the association opposes the proposal, the supervisors might have second thoughts about moving forward, she said.
The homeowners association was not represented by speakers at the webinar, but did provide its residents a link to it in advance. In a Facebook posting, it noted that the stream and woods “are filled with wonders.”
For now, environmental groups are focusing exclusively on Segment 6, not the remainder of the $18 million bikeway project. Asking the county government to abandon the proposal entirely would be “a bit much,” Grebe acknowledged.
Kevin O’Brien, the Virginia organizer for WABA, said his organization and other active-transportation advocates partner with environmental organizations as part of the Fairfax Healthy Communities Coalition.
“That has been a great and much-appreciated forum in which our groups with our different perspectives can come together and discuss issues around transportation, housing, sustainability and livability,” he said.
“We don’t always end up seeing eye-to-eye, but the conversations have certainly helped clarify where folks are coming from and helped unearth those areas where we do actually have common cause,” O’Brien said.
WABA’s Browne says he rides frequently in the vicinity, and a connection to and from the Franconia-Springfield station would not just benefit bicycle commuters to points south, but also those on pleasure trips.
“It’s the best way to get from the Metro to some great riding at Meadowood and Mason Neck,” he said.
Improvements in the corridor are needed, WABA said in a statement to FFXnow, suggesting that using existing paths in place of Segment 6 may be a non-starter:
“A trail along that corridor closes an important network gap and opens up active transportation connections from the Metro to major employment centers like Fort Belvoir and recreational destinations like Mount Vernon. The existing bike infrastructure in the area is suboptimal at best. The bike lanes on Beulah and Telegraph are narrow and unprotected, placing riders very close to six lanes of fast-moving car traffic. Low-stress (and less hilly) trail access to the Franconia Springfield Metro opens up last-mile connections for people in the area who aren’t comfortable riding on high-volume, high-speed state roads.”
FABB said the project can draw from the experiences of a number of earlier efforts to minimize environmental damage.
“Throughout Northern Virginia — from Mason Neck to Pohick Bay, to Dyke Marsh, Huntley Meadows and Roosevelt Island — we have examples of how trails and ecologically sensitive areas can coexist with careful planning and managed trails,” its board of directors said.
The specific environmental concern in the vicinity is over a rarity in the ecological landscape: acidic seepage swamps.
“It’s not a very sexy name,” Grebe acknowledged of the nutrient-poor swampy areas that occur where the coastal plain meets the piedmont.
In addition to damage resulting from cutting a trail through the area, environmental groups fear invasive plants inadvertently being brought in both during construction and future use.
However, the bicycle groups said all sides in the debate need to keep in mind the environmental benefits that the trail will bring by taking more vehicles off the roadway.
“If Fairfax County is sincere in its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2040, we must continue investing in trails, protected bike lanes, walkways, pedestrian bridges and sidewalks,” FABB said.
There remains time for additional mitigations to potentially be identified: the Fairfax County Department of Transporation doesn’t anticipate starting construction on the bikeway until spring 2028.
