When an urban trail makes paper maps freely available, you get a sense that the city and surrounding metropolitan area are serious about making biking and running easier for their residents! And visitors. I had visited Atlanta for work quite a few times but I was surprised not to find any “Running in Atlanta” post in my 800+ collection, so here is a first one, followed by another upcoming post about a run I did in the Big A Town.
When I started my blog 18 years ago, there weren’t too many on-line resources recommending running routes when visiting a new place. The best approach was to look at maps and spot trails when available as thin green lines, or canals or train tracks, hoping they would have some good and safe running path along. Fast forward almost 2 decades and a good set of options popped up in the search results, including a few which had the word belt in their name (see for instance this list from GreatRuns or Atlanta Track Club's recommendations).
Like Paris has its boulevard périphérique around its 20 arrondissements (districts), but for car, Atlanta is building a similar extensive belt all around the city, but for bikes and pedestrians. And, yes, I said bikes, not e-bikes which I consider being light motorcycles and not mixing well at all with the formers. Although I’m sure many commuters would disagree with this statement and want to use such a belt to go full speed in a car-free environment.
I hadn’t taken the time to look for a map of that belt before going out on Friday morning, before our noon visit at Georgia Tech. I found that map while running on the Eastern section. It does show two finalized sections, on the East and West sides, with major developments and plans to build connectors at the North and South.
For the section I used, it was really wide and I liked the smooth concrete. It was mid-morning on Friday morning, on a workday and, after the early morning commute time, the traffic was quite light. I’ve heard from locals that riding a bike on that trail on Saturdays or Sundays is epic.
Here is a Relive flyover of my out and back on that Eastern section (click on the image below or this link).
There you are for a great way to log a good number of miles away from cars, and without having to cross too many streets. From a city planning, it shows how harder it is to plan and build such green and pedestrian arteries after the fact, but super well done, Atlanta, keep up the great work and effort!
PS: a few vignettes along that trail.
Reynoldstown area.
The back of the map/flier.
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