The Fall Line Trail Is Open Now. It's Just Not the Part You'd Expect.

If you've watched the render of the Fall Line Trail circulating for a few years now, the mental map is probably fixed: a green ribbon running from Ashland down through Richmond's North Side, across downtown, and out toward Petersburg, stitching the whole region together. Forty-three miles, one continuous path, coming to a park near you.

Here's what's actually true if you want to ride it this week. The only stretch you can get on right now sits nowhere near Richmond's West End neighborhoods. It runs through Hanover County farmland, and the segment closest to the city, the one that cuts through Bryan Park, is the one still tangled in a fight over six trees.

What you can actually ride this month

The open section is about five miles, starting at Carter Park in Ashland and running south along a power-line easement through Hanover County forest and farmland before crossing the Chickahominy River into Henrico, ending at Woodman Road. It opened on September 24, 2025, with a ribbon-cutting that Hanover County officials and Sports Backers, the nonprofit that has championed the project since it began, treated as the trail's first real milestone.

If you're starting from Ashland, park at Carter Park or in one of the public lots downtown so you can grab lunch after. If you'd rather approach from the Henrico side, park at Glover Park and walk or bike along Woodman Road to meet the trail between the Winfrey Road and Farmstead Mill Drive intersections. The path is paved and separated from car traffic the entire way, so tennis shoes and a regular bike tire are fine. There's no gate and no posted hours, but if you drive in, make sure your parking spot doesn't lock up overnight.

What you won't find on this stretch is anything urban. It's a forested, farmland corridor built specifically because it was the easiest ground to break. That's not an accident, and it's the key to understanding why the map looks finished in some places and stalled in others.

Why the quiet miles got built first

The Hanover section crosses land with almost no competing use. A power-line easement doesn't have a Saturday farmers market on it. It doesn't have a Friends group that's been organizing park events for decades. It's mostly forest, some farmland, then a river crossing.

Compare that to the Bryan Park segment in Richmond, which broke ground back in 2024 and has been stuck in redesign since. The trail here needs to cut through a functioning, well-used 262-acre city park, and the city's own engineering report laid out just how much that costs depending on the route:

The original route is cheaper and removes far fewer trees, but it also drew the loudest objections, partly over concerns it would disrupt the RVA Big Market, the Saturday market that's been a fixture in the park. More than 200 people showed up to a city-organized hearing on the plan, and Sports Backers reportedly organized a cross-city bike ride so supporters could attend in numbers. That's the kind of scrutiny a power-line easement in rural Hanover never had to survive.

Where the Bryan Park timeline actually stands

By late 2025, city officials said they'd worked through the worst of it. Dironna Moore Clarke, who leads Richmond's Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility, told reporters that construction on the Bryan Park segment would start in January 2026, with the goal of finishing that same summer. Mayor Danny Avula described the process as slow but necessary:

"It's important that we hear that. But it was also important to see that there was so much more support for the proposed path through the park from a larger swath of the community."

That target puts completion somewhere in the season we're in right now. If you live near Bryan Park and haven't heard a ribbon-cutting announced yet, that's worth watching for rather than assuming. Richmond's fiscal year 2026 budget set aside $11 million for the city's piece of the trail, which begins at Bryan Park, so the money is committed even where the schedule has already slipped once.

The next open miles won't be in the city either

While Richmond works through its one contested mile, Henrico County is already lining up its next phase further out. The Longdale segment will run 3.2 miles from the intersection of Parham Road and Cleveland Street to the new Woodman Road Extension, with major trailheads planned at Cleveland Street and Athens Road and at the Longdale Recreation Center. It's currently in design, with construction slated to start in the fourth quarter of 2026 and wrap by 2028.

Put those two facts side by side and the pattern holds. The segments moving fastest are the ones with the fewest people to negotiate with. The segment nearest the most Richmond residents is the one taking the longest, not because anyone's dragging their feet, but because a public park with a weekly market and an organized Friends group is a genuinely harder place to build than an easement through the woods. By the time the Fall Line reaches the neighborhoods closest to the city center, it will likely have already opened new mileage further out in the counties on either side of it.

For context on the scale of what's still ahead: by the end of 2025, roughly 20 miles of the planned 43 were built or under some phase of active construction, according to Chet Parsons, executive director of the Central Virginia Transportation Authority. City and county officials have pointed to 2030 as the target for the full Ashland-to-Petersburg connection.

If you want to try it this weekend

• Drive to Carter Park in Ashland or park downtown and walk the connector trail to reach the Fall Line.
• From the Henrico side, park at Glover Park and use the Woodman Road connector.
• Bring water and sunscreen. The Hanover stretch is largely open, wooded corridor with limited shade cover in places and no amenities along the route yet.
• Check for updates before heading to Bryan Park specifically. The segment there is still under construction as officials work toward a summer 2026 finish.

The trail is real, and the five miles that are open are genuinely worth an afternoon. What's worth knowing, if you live in the West End or anywhere near the park, is that the version closest to you is also the version that took the longest road to get built, and it's still not finished.

We track things like this because it's the texture of actually living here, not because it changes anyone's address. If you're curious what's happening with home values in the neighborhoods near Bryan Park or anywhere else in Richmond's West End, Terri Brennan Homes is happy to talk through it. Request a free home valuation whenever you're ready.