Great American Bike Trail will start in Washington and end in the other Washington

Rails-to-trails on Wednesday announced its vision for the Great American Bike Trail, a bike route connecting 4000 miles of rail-trail and stretching from Georgetown in Washington, DC to Cedar Falls, WA about 35 miles east of Seattle. Locally, the GABT uses the Capital Crescent Trail and the C&O Tow path. 

"The Great American Rail-Trail is a bold vision—one that will take years to complete. The investment of time and resources necessary to complete this trail will be returned many times over as it takes its place among the country's national treasures," said Laughlin

The Great American Rail-Trail is a signature project of RTC and the most ambitious in its portfolio of TrailNation™ projects—the organization's initiative to encourage the rapid replication of regional trail networks across the country. The trail was first envisioned in the late 1980s by RTC co-founder David Burwell, and for decades has been an underpinning of the organization's strategy to create a nationwide network of public trails. 

The GABT marks the third trans-national trail to pass through or into the DC area. Both the East Coast Greenway, running from Maine to Florida, and the American Discovery Trail, from the Delaware shore to San Francisco, pass through the District. The major difference between this trail from the ADT, is that this one would primarily connect rail trails and the ADT is much more likely to be on-road. 

Interestingly, the western end of this trails ends shy of Seattle, but the railroad grade that it runs on there continues west. In fact there are two tracks from there. One becomes the Snoqualmie Valley Trail which ends in Duvall, WA though the ROW continues up to Monroe, WA. The other, after a 10+mile long gap, becomes the Cedar River Trail. That rail-trail ends in the Seattle suburb of Renton. It's unclear to me why the gap exists or why they stopped the trail where they did, but it means any future Mariners-Nationals World Series won't be called the Great American Bike Trail Series. 

Comments

[Dave]

They missed an opportunity here, the trail should go from Takoma Washington to Tacoma Washington.

[washycle]

Or Mt. Rainier to Mt. Rainier.

[TK]

As a recent transplant from the East Coast, there are a bunch of similarities...

Arlington to Arlington, Mt Vernon to Mt Vernon, Capitol Hill to Capitol Hill, Georgetown to Georgetown, or NoMa to SoDo if you want to get gentrified.

[Crickey]

I think BikeSnob would call it swabbing Canada's armpit.

[Bob Palin]

Depending on what you mean by 'on road' the American Discovery Trail moves off road more and more each year. Currently about 5% of the ADT is on pavement, there are of course a lot of farm roads and dirt roads. Some of the ADT will always be on pavement as it intentionally passes through cities and towns. The ADT Society is looking forward to seeing another cross country route being created.

[Clark Anderson]

I want to do Seattle to DC next summer. Has anyone who has done it have information about the trails they rode on and routes where there is no trail?