Letter: Fairfax City Council must approve the George Snyder Trail

June 9, 2025 

Re: George Snyder Trail Project

Dear Mayor Read and Members of City Council,

I am writing on behalf of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) to express our deep concerns regarding the delay and potential cancellation of all or part of the George Snyder Trail in Fairfax City and to encourage in the strongest possible terms that the City Council vote to proceed with construction of the full project.

For more than fifty years, WABA has worked to transform the Capital region by improving conditions for people who bike. Our work to advocate for dedicated bike infrastructure including trails, pass laws that promote safe roadway behavior, and provide education programming for all road-users has resulted in a drastically different cultural and political approach to bicycling. Biking can and should be an equitable, safe, low-cost, time-saving, and sustainable way to navigate our region for all residents and visitors. Thanks to local, state, and federal investments, our region is embracing a more active, multimodal transportation future and serving as a model for communities across the nation. 

Key to realizing that future is creating a low-stress and comprehensive bike route network that connects people to all manner of destinations, across jurisdictions, safely and conveniently. While the addition of any segment of protected bike lane or multi-use trail is beneficial, those segments that connect to and build on existing networks provide exponentially more impact. That network multiplier effect is why we were so excited about the 2-mile George Snyder Trail – stitching into 40+ miles of the existing I-66 Parallel, Wilcoxon, and Gerry Connolly Cross-County Trail networks – and why we are so dismayed by the possibility of its elimination.

Exacerbating our dismay is the fact that this project is fully designed and fully funded. In our decades of following bike-related infrastructure, we cannot recall a jurisdiction backing out of a project this late in the process with so much dedicated funding at stake. To willingly hand back hardwon dollars at any time is eyebrow-raising; to do so during a period of lean budgeting borders on malpractice. 

We are deeply concerned about the precedents that this 11th hour debate and potential revision or cancellation will set. The George Snyder Trail has been in the works for over a decade with many, many public opportunities for trail advocates and opponents to weigh in on the design. Urban planning isn’t (and shouldn’t be) strictly a popularity contest but the open, quasi-democratic development process indeed helped refine the concept into a better, more sustainable final design reflective of community concerns. Now, we’re reopening debate outside of the normal process and nullifying the results of careful community-consensus building at the whim of a few – can we be sure other future projects won’t be similarly derailed by a vocal minority of uncompromising opponents?

Perhaps more damaging is the impacts to future funding for Fairfax City projects specifically, and trails in general. Smaller jurisdictions like Fairfax City already face an uphill battle in competitive grantseeking processes given limited staff capacity and smaller project scopes. Grantmaking bodies want to see ‘wins’ and would surely remember the ‘black eye’ that a project cancellation of this magnitude would cause. And despite some notable investments in our active transportation network, funding for bike- and pedestrian-focused projects remains unfortunately limited and sporadic; VDOT and local transportation agencies will surely think twice about any future trails, regardless of their merits, due to the potential for unassailable pushback.

To sum up: here we have a fully funded infrastructure project supported by the City’s own longstanding comprehensive plan; that multiplies the connectivity and utility of existing local and regional trail networks to the benefit of City residents and visitors alike; that was thoughtfully developed and revised by staff with plentiful opportunities for community input; that will help alleviate congestion by making it easier to walk and bike; and that will effectively catalyze habitat restoration and address stormwater issues. No project is perfect and all infrastructure involves tradeoffs, but the George Snyder Trail is clearly a project with enormous net benefits to the City, its residents, and the larger region and must be allowed to move forward.

We urge you to vote to allow the entire project to proceed.

Sincerely, 

Kevin O’Brien, Virginia Organizer

Washington Area Bicyclist Association