September 25, 2025
by Tom Ewing
In late September 2025, bicyclists lined up to open a 4.8 mile section of the Fall Line Trail south of Ashland Virginia. This section is part of a projected forty plus mile bicycle route that will connect communities from Petersburg in the south through Richmond to Ashland in the north.
The opening of this bicycle trail is connected spatially, conceptually, and historically to the Bike 76 VA project. The original route for the Bikecentennial included a section of downtown Ashland just north of the new trail section. Cyclists who follow the alternative route from Charles City along the Virginia Capital Trail into downtown Richmond will be able to ride along this section of the Fall Line Trail until they connect back with Route 76 in downtown Ashland. As discussed in the Ashland podcast episode, this part of Route 76 is unusual because roads (and thus the bicycle route) run parallel to train tracks in opposite directions. Westbound riders go north on the east side of the tracks; eastbound riders go south on the west side of the tracks. This configuration indicates the close relationship between railways and roads in shaping the modern history of American towns.
The new section of the Fall Line trail also illustrates historical connections because the trail is built upon a trolley line, which was completed in 1907 and used for about two decades for transportation to and from the city of Richmond. The fifteen mile trip took forty minutes and made nineteen stops, from the Ashland Station to downtown Richmond.
The history of trolleys and bicycles have some interesting parallel trajectories. Both emerged as new technologies in the late nineteenth century, flourished in the early twentieth century, and then saw popularity and utility displaced by the rapid expansion of passenger cars. The year 1907, when the Richmond and Ashland Electric Railway began operation, was also nearing the peak time for the popularity of the first wave of bicycling. An advertisement for the Roanoke Bicycle Shop in March 1907 conveyed that sense of growing popularity with the statement of one million bicycle riders in the United States. It is thus fitting that these two forms of transportation have now converged in the transformation of trolley lines with a new purpose of encouraging recreational and commuting cyclists to expand the use of alternative transportation in the twenty-first century.
Leave a Reply