Most people in Chevy Chase have absorbed the same shorthand: the Purple Line is almost done, so the trail must be too. It's a reasonable assumption. It's also wrong, and the gap between the two matters if you've spent the last nine years planning your runs and rides around a detour.
The Capital Crescent Trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring has been closed since September 2017, torn up for the light rail construction running alongside it. The stand-in has been an on-road route that funnels cyclists onto Jones Bridge Road, a stretch with no marked bike lane and no shoulder to speak of. If you've ridden it, you already know why people default to driving instead. What's changing now, and changing on a different clock than the trail's neighbors, is worth laying out plainly.
Nine Years Of Rerouting Around One Road
The closed segment runs from Bethesda through Chevy Chase and into Silver Spring, following the old Georgetown Branch railroad bed the trail has used for decades. For the stretch that's stayed open, from Bethesda into Georgetown, the numbers are large enough that the closure isn't a niche inconvenience. The Capital Crescent draws more than a million walkers, runners and cyclists a year across its full length, according to the trail's own history. Cutting off the Silver Spring end for nearly a decade has pushed a meaningful share of that traffic onto neighborhood streets instead.
Anyone who walks or bikes the Connecticut Avenue corridor near Chevy Chase Lake Drive has run into the other half of this closure too. The sidewalk on the northbound side between Chevy Chase Lake Drive and Manor Road has been shut for construction, with pedestrians rerouted to the southbound crosswalks. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that reorganizes how you move through your own neighborhood without anyone ever announcing it as news.
The Trail Doesn't Wait For The Train
Here's the part that gets flattened in most casual conversation. The Purple Line itself, the actual light rail service connecting Bethesda to New Carrollton, isn't expected to carry passengers until winter 2027. That date has moved before and could move again. But the trail running beside the tracks is on a separate, earlier schedule.
Track installation for the light rail wrapped in May 2026, when Maryland officials gathered in Silver Spring to lay the final rail. That milestone marked the project moving into its final construction phase. As of this summer, remaining work along Chevy Chase Lake Drive, including curbs, sidewalks, final paving and grass seeding, is targeted for completion by the end of summer 2026. The Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail, the volunteer group that has tracked this project since the 1980s, currently lists the reopening as tentative for fall 2026, once Montgomery County takes over trail management from the construction team.
It's worth saying that this date has shifted before. A 2024 state report floated spring 2026 as an early win, a year earlier than the reopening timeline officials had projected just months before. That didn't hold either. The current fall 2026 target is more conservative and comes from people who've watched deadlines slip for the better part of a decade.
"We are working very hard to complete construction of the Capital Crescent Trail in spring, summer of next year," Purple Line senior project director Ray Biggs told the Montgomery County Council's Transportation and Environment Committee.
Read that quote in context. Biggs was talking about construction finishing, not the trail opening to the public, and even that has since needed the summer buffer. The honest version of this story is that Chevy Chase residents are likely to be back on a connected trail to Silver Spring by some point in the fall, doing it on foot or by bike, more than a year before a single train actually runs the route those tracks were built for.
The Corridor Filling In While The Trail Waits
While all of that construction has been grinding along Connecticut Avenue, the retail around it hasn't been standing still. Wheelhouse opened this spring at 5712-14 Connecticut Avenue, just over the Montgomery County line in Chevy Chase, D.C., in the space that used to hold the Wine & Organic Market. It's a nautical-themed spot from Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, the team behind Millie's in Spring Valley, built around a 35-foot bar and a patio meant for the kind of neighborhood repeat business that outlasts a grand opening.
A few minutes away, Elena James has settled into Chevy Chase, Maryland, serving New American food from restaurateurs Colin McClimans and Danilo Simic, who also run Nina May and Opal in the District. Up on Wisconsin Avenue in Friendship Heights, The Hunter's Hound has brought a gastropub with tall windows over the avenue, the kind of room built for a Sunday brunch or a weeknight dinner without needing an occasion.
None of these openings are tied to the trail project. But the timing lands the same way. Residents who've spent years navigating around construction fencing are getting new places to walk to right as the fencing starts to come down. A neighborhood's daily map doesn't usually get rewritten on two fronts at once, but that's what's happening here.
What Hasn't Moved At All
Against all of that change, the neighborhood's Saturday morning ritual has stayed exactly where it's always been. Two separate farmers markets run in Chevy Chase, and they're easy to mix up if you don't already know the difference.
- The Chevy Chase Farmers Market has run for more than a decade, built around a rotating roster of small growers and prepared food vendors.
- The Chevy Chase Section 3 market sets up on Saturdays at Taylor Street and Brookville Road, with parking available behind La Ferme, the longtime French restaurant that anchors that corner.
Neither market has anything to do with the Purple Line or the trail. That's the point. While Connecticut Avenue reorganizes itself around construction crews and new restaurant openings, the Saturday market routine keeps running on the same clock it always has, a small, steady counterweight to everything else moving around it.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
Put it together and the honest picture is this: a nine-year disruption is closer to ending than it's been at any point since it started, but on its own separate timeline from the transit project that caused it. The crews finishing your sidewalk on Chevy Chase Lake Drive expect to be done by late summer 2026. The people running the trains aren't expecting to start passenger service until late 2027. Plan your fall walks and rides accordingly, and don't be surprised if the reopening announcement comes more than a year before you ever see a train roll through.
For homeowners thinking about how their own property fits into a neighborhood that's clearly in motion, whether that means a renovation that opens the house toward a soon-to-be-reconnected trail or a full rebuild that takes the changing corridor into account, Chesapeake Custom Homes & Development works directly with Chevy Chase clients on exactly that kind of planning. Schedule a Feasibility Consultation to talk through what's possible on your lot before the next phase of the neighborhood arrives.
