The Fall Line Trail will be a major construction project and a permanent addition to the city. It should be built only after thorough study and consideration of the cost, safety, environmental, traffic and neighborhood impacts.

Unfortunately, to date many of the decisions about the trail’s route, engineering, funding and impacts to city infrastructure have been made outside public view, with little input from City Council, North Side residents or other Richmond citizens. In fact, the main driver of the project is Sports Backers, which has been intimately involved in the project’s planning, engineering and promotion. Sports Backers has even confronted citizens who question the trail’s planned route, promising to “pack the room” at public meetings with supporters to overwhelm residents who have alternative perspectives.

While ground was ceremonially broken on the trail in Bryan Park last fall, the city has shared few details about the trail’s route through city neighborhoods, its impacts on private property, its costs, funding sources, and effects on traffic (especially the problematic Laburnum Avenue-Hermitage Road intersection). It remains unclear whether the city has answers to these questions.

The city has long pledged there would be full citizen involvement in the trail’s route and design. But when City Council accepted $3 million for trail construction in March 2024, the opposite happened: the city chose the route and design through Bryan Park with little public input and no Council approval. Funding and building multimillion dollar infrastructure without Council approval is bad governance, if not illegal.

Therefore, we ask that Mayor Avula and City Council halt further work on the Fall Line Trail in Richmond until the city assesses and shares the costs and impacts on city neighborhoods, streets, and the environment, and fully engages the public in decision-making.

While the Fall Line Trail may prove to be a popular community asset, its multi-million-dollar costs and citywide impacts demand it be planned, funded and constructed with transparency and public participation. To date, there has been little of either.

CHUCK EPES

ELIZABETH BARRETT

The writers are the co-founders of Citizens for a Responsible Fall Line Trail.