For most of the last decade, mentioning the Broadneck Trail to someone on the peninsula got you a specific kind of eye roll. It was the trail that stopped at Bay Dale Drive. The one with orange construction fencing near the community college that never seemed to move. The project you'd stopped checking on because checking on it had become its own small disappointment.
That changed on March 30, 2026, when county officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting that closed the final three gaps in the route. Phases 1B, 3, and 5 are open now, which means the Broadneck Peninsula Trail runs as one continuous, paved path from the Severn River all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. If you've been riding the finished chunks in isolation for years, the news is not that a nice amenity got a little nicer. It's that the thing you gave up on waiting for is actually done.
What Closed the Loop
The full project has been in the works since 1999 and carries a price tag of $17.5 million, according to reporting from the Severna Park Voice. County Executive Steuart Pittman, Director of Recreation and Parks Jessica Leys, and Director of Public Works Karen Henry were on hand for the ceremony, along with County Councilwoman Amanda Fiedler, BikeAAA President Jon Korin, and Jack Keene of the Friends of Anne Arundel County Trails. That's a lot of officials for a bike path, and it says something about how long this particular fix has been on the county's list.
The trail itself is a paved, 10-foot-wide asphalt corridor running roughly 8 miles, mostly within the right-of-way of College Parkway. It isn't a standalone amenity. At its southern end it connects to the 13.3-mile B&A Trail at Jones Station Road, a junction locally known as the Jones Station Crossroads. That intersection carries more weight than the name suggests: it's where the American Discovery Trail meets the East Coast Greenway and the 9/11 Memorial Trail, three long-distance trail systems converging on a stretch of Arnold most residents drive past without a second look.
Here's roughly how the pieces fit together now that the gaps are filled:
| Phase | Segment | Status |
|---|---|---|
| IV | B&A Trail (Jones Station Rd) to Peninsula Farm Road | Completed in an earlier construction round |
| II | Bay Dale Drive to Green Holly Drive | Completed in an earlier construction round |
| III | Peninsula Farm Road to Bay Dale Drive | Opened March 30, 2026 |
| 1A | Green Holly Drive to East College Parkway | Completed in an earlier construction round |
| 1B | East College Parkway to Bay Head Drive | Opened March 30, 2026 |
| V | Bay Head Park to Sandy Point State Park | Opened March 30, 2026 |
Three of six phases sat unfinished for years while the rest of the trail quietly worked. Now all six connect.
The Ride, End to End
If you want to see what that connection actually gets you, the route breaks down into a handful of real stops rather than an abstract mileage number.
- Start at Jonas Green Park, the southern terminus of the B&A Trail on the Severn River. It has a sandy beach for cartop boat launching, a 288-foot fishing pier, and a visitor center that also serves as headquarters for the county's trail system, open Tuesday through Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Head north on the B&A Trail to the Jones Station Crossroads, where you pick up the Broadneck Trail proper.
- Pass Anne Arundel Community College and the Broadneck Library, both now reachable by bike or on foot without touching College Parkway traffic.
- Reach Broadneck Park, at 613 College Parkway, which has a dog park, playground, pavilion, and picnic area if you need a break at roughly the midpoint.
- Continue toward Bay Dale Drive and Cape St. Claire, where the corridor picks up the closest thing to a commercial cluster along the route: coffee, shops, and casual restaurants a short walk off the path.
- Ride through Bay Head Park on the newly opened Phase 1B segment.
- Finish at Sandy Point State Park, which Maryland DNR lists as having 22 boat-launch ramps, six finger piers, a small-craft launch area, a full mile of sandy beachfront, and fishing and crabbing piers.
That's a car-free route from a river beach to a bay beach, something that simply didn't exist as a single trip before this spring.
The Detours Worth Making
Two spots just off the corridor are worth knowing about even though they aren't directly on the paved trail.
Spriggs Farm Park offers a cartop launch for canoes and kayaks on the Magothy River, but it comes with a catch the county is upfront about: the carry from parking area to water is roughly 150 yards down a steep slope. It's a real launch point, not a convenience one, and worth planning around if you're hauling a boat solo.
Ferry Point Marina, a short ride or drive off College Parkway via Jones Station Road, sits on Mill Creek off the Magothy with more than 100 slips and an on-site restaurant, The Point Crab House & Grill. It's not part of the trail network, but for anyone stringing together a full day on the peninsula, it's the natural place to end up for dinner with a water view.
Why It Took Twenty-Seven Years
The delay wasn't just paperwork. College Parkway runs through terrain that's steeper and more cut up than it looks from a car window, with grades and gullies that required significant earthwork to make a 10-foot paved path work in a road right-of-way never designed for one. Combine that with a project funded and built in six separate phases over a quarter century, each requiring its own design, permitting, and construction bids, and the math on why this took until 2026 starts to make sense. It wasn't one project. It was six projects that had to agree to become one.
What This Actually Changes on a Saturday
The practical shift is smaller than the ribbon-cutting ceremony made it sound, and also more useful. It means a Broadneck Peninsula resident can leave the house on a bike, stop at Jonas Green Park to fish off the old bridge remains, cut over to the community college corridor, grab coffee near Bay Dale Drive, and land at Sandy Point in time for the afternoon sun, all without merging onto Ritchie Highway or College Parkway traffic once. For a decade that Saturday required driving to two different trailheads and pretending they were part of the same system. Now they are.
If you've been putting off a proper end-to-end ride because the last time you checked, the trail still had gaps in it, this is the season to check again.
Carol Gust has spent years walking, biking, and showing homes along this exact stretch of the Broadneck Peninsula, and keeps close tabs on the local changes that make daily life here better, not just the ones that show up in a listing. If you're curious how a finished trail like this one factors into what a neighborhood is actually like to live in, reach out for a conversation, no obligation required.
