Do you like maps and bike trails and visions of grandeur? Of course you do, and this is your website: the Great American Rail Trail is taking shape.

For anyone with the time and ambition to ride across this continent, a smooth, safe and continuous bike trail would be an unalloyed godsend. No more risk of being sideswiped by a truck on a lonely backroad in Indiana; no choosing between a rutted gravel shoulder and a narrow, cracked asphalt road-edge in windblown Kansas. The GART would convert about 1800 miles of old rail beds into new bike trails and link those new trails to 1900 miles of existing trail, creating a dream bike route from Washington state to Washington, D.C. When finished, it would run within 50 miles of 50 million American’s homes.

The plan has holes in it. For openers, there’s a Wyoming-sized hole in Wyoming; that state will need to build 500 miles of trail before the GART is real. Montana has a 350-mile gap. But elsewhere, large sections are functional today. As detailed in the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s overview of the GART, Maryland’s 200 miles are already completed. Pennsylvania’s 172 miles are 94 percent in place. Washington and Idaho are at 71 and 88 percent, respectively. Altogether, the RTC points out, the trail is already 52 percent finished.

Of course, this is simply RTC’s vision of what a GART might look like; there’s no formal federal support (although some local entities seem like they’re addressing the gaps with this GART vision in mind).  And if you’re over 50, you probably won’t see all the gaps filled in your cycling lifetime. But you can cherry-pick any completed bits—all of which are detailed in the overview—that seem interesting right now. In essence, you can section-ride according to your time and interest. Or you can leave the finished rail-trails and brave the highway to make your cross-country trip.

So check out the website, then skim the overview, then start comparing the route to Google Earth to see what it looks like now. It’s a glass half-full (or 52 percent) situation. You can see how beautiful some of the stretches look. You can see that Nebraska needs more shade. You can compare the high-country glory of Idaho’s Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes to that lonely stretch of Highway 26 running outside of Glenrock, Wyoming. And you can look intently at your quads and wonder if maybe.

 

Image: Robert Ashworth via Wikimedia Commons