If you have ridden or walked the Broadneck Peninsula Trail any time in the last decade, you know the moment. You are cruising along a smooth, ten-foot-wide path past Broadneck Park, maybe past the library, and then the pavement just stops. Somewhere around Cape St. Claire Road, the trail hands you back to College Parkway, and you either turn around or you finish your ride on the shoulder of a four-lane arterial with cars doing 40 miles an hour past your handlebars. For years, that was the actual experience of the Broadneck Peninsula Trail: a good idea in pieces, cut short right where it got interesting.
That changed on March 30, 2026. Anne Arundel County held a ribbon-cutting to open the trail's remaining phases, 1B, 3, and 5, closing the gaps that used to send riders back onto the highway. Recreation and Parks Director Jessica Leys and BikeAAA president Jon Korin were both on hand for the ceremony. What they were marking wasn't just more asphalt. It was the end of a routing problem that had defined this trail since the first shovel went into the ground back in 2012.
The trail was never really unfinished. It was disconnected.
Here's the part that gets lost if you only hear "the trail is done": the Broadneck Peninsula Trail has been open, in fragments, for most of the last 13 years. Phase 1A broke ground in August 2012 along College Parkway from Green Holly Drive to Cape St. Claire Road, with an expected finish time of six months. Phase II construction started in 2018. A federal award in later years added another 2.5 miles between Peninsula Farm and Bay Dale roads, and a separate Maryland Bikeways grant funded roughly another mile out to Bay Head Park. Each piece worked on its own. None of them connected to make a single ride.
That is the actual mechanism behind why this trail took over two decades from first concept to finished product. It was never one construction delay. It was a five-phase project funded phase by phase, county budget cycle by county budget cycle, with each completed segment still ending at a road crossing that sent you back into traffic if you wanted to keep going. The March 2026 opening is the first time all five phases exist as a single, unbroken route.
The scope grew along the way too. When Phase 1 broke ground in 2012, county planners described a 6.6-mile trail. The version that opened this spring runs closer to 8 miles, with the additional mileage coming from connector spurs and the phases added after the original plan, including new bridges built as part of Phase 3.
The trail's real upgrade this year isn't smoother pavement. It's that you no longer have to get back in a car, or onto a road shoulder, to finish the ride you started.
What the finished route actually connects
With the gaps closed, the Broadneck Peninsula Trail now runs from the B&A Trail on one end to Sandy Point State Park on the other, entirely on paved, car-free path. Along the way it passes Broadneck Park, the Broadneck Library, Anne Arundel Community College, and Bay Head Park. If you have only ever ridden the middle section, the two endpoints are worth knowing about: on the west side, you can pick up the B&A Trail and keep going toward Severna Park and eventually Annapolis. On the east side, you now roll straight into Sandy Point, without a car ever entering the equation.
The trail also plugs into something bigger than Anne Arundel County. It is included in the American Discovery Trail network, the coast-to-coast route that stretches from Cape Henlopen, Delaware to Point Reyes, California, and it connects to the East Coast Greenway, the north-south route running from Maine to Florida. That is not a detail most people need day to day, but it explains why the county and outside trail advocacy groups treated this ribbon-cutting as more than a local ceremony. A fully connected Broadneck segment closes a gap in two national systems, not just a local commute.
What's waiting for you at the other end
The trail's midpoint, Broadneck Park at 613 College Parkway, has had its own quiet upgrade. The park's playground was resurfaced as part of the county's Community Park Playground Initiative, a program that has brought new accessibility features to seven community playgrounds across the county. The new surface means the playground now works for kids and adults using mobility devices, not just for kids who can navigate mulch and uneven ground. If you have skipped that playground because the old surface was rough, it is worth another look.
The park's dog park, split into separate large-dog and small-dog sections with benches for owners, is still one of the few off-leash spots on this end of the peninsula, and it sits right off the newly finished trail rather than requiring a separate trip.
If paddling is more your speed than walking or biking, Spriggs Farm Park on Bayberry Drive has a cartop launch for canoes and kayaks that puts you directly on the Magothy River. It is not a convenience launch. The carry from the drop-off to the water is about 150 yards down a steep slope, so it rewards planning rather than a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it is one of the few points on this side of Arnold where you can get a small boat on the water without driving to a marina.
The one weekend worth putting on the calendar
If you want a reason to get out and use all of this before the weather turns, the Anne Arundel County Fair returns to the fairgrounds in Crownsville from September 16 through 20. This is the 74th year for the fair, and it still runs on the same instincts it always has: livestock shows, tractor pulls, pig races, a pie eating contest, and this year two new additions, a dinosaur show and a firefighting show. Wednesday's opening night benefits the Anne Arundel County Food Bank, and gate admission runs $10 for anyone ten and older, with kids nine and under free. It is not on the Broadneck Trail itself, but it is the same kind of low-effort, high-payoff outing that a finished trail makes easier to plan around, especially if you are coming from anywhere on the Broadneck side of the county.
Why this matters more than a new coat of pavement
None of this is really about trail mileage. It is about what a resident can now do without getting in a car. Before March 2026, using the Broadneck Peninsula Trail meant picking a segment and turning around when you hit a road. Now it means picking a direction and actually arriving somewhere, whether that is the B&A Trail's connection to Annapolis or the beach at Sandy Point State Park. That is the kind of change that shows up in daily routines more than in any headline. Fewer trips where the dog walk turns into standing at a crosswalk. Fewer rides that end at an intersection instead of a destination.
If you have put off exploring the far ends of this trail because you remember where it used to stop, this fall is the season to go find out where it goes now.
For everything else happening in Arnold and across the Broadneck Peninsula, from home values to neighborhood trends, The PCS Home Team keeps a close eye on the corner of Anne Arundel County we call home. Make Your Move Easy: schedule a free consultation whenever you are ready to talk through what's next.
