Cinder Bed Road Bikeway -
On the wrong path!

⭐ Cinder Bed Road Bikeway Protest! ⭐
April 11, 2026, 10:00 AM
Location - 7130 Silver Lake Blvd, Alexandria

Join the Cinder Bed Road Bikeway Protest at the Franconia District office ribbon cutting. Letter writing and meetings by environmental groups have produced no pause, while time is running out. Now let's try some attention-getting! If we toss some grains of sand in the gears, enough such sand could cause the project to quietly go away without the drama of eminent domain hearings.

We need to get together everyone who is willing to show up with signs in opposition to the Bikeway to join this little party.

We will be civil, we will be quiet, we will observe their free speech zone, but we will be seen!

Please invite everyone who may be willing to show up.
RSVP / Questions

Print out one of these signs or make your own

Can't get enough pavement in our parks, floodplains and stream valleys? Then here's a plan for much more!

In 2021, Friends of Accotink Creek became aware of the revival of proposals to pave the currently untouched Long Branch south stream valley, promoted as fulfillment of the county Comprehensive Plan. This plan seemed to have been buried in 2015, but it has risen to haunt us again.

This is part of an ongoing pattern of pitting two worthy goals – enhanced non-motorized transportation and habitat preservation - against each other, always choosing the path of least resistance that leads through our dwindling reserve of wooded habitat. Worse in this case is the plan for 24-hour lighting of the path, stressing and disrupting the lives of wildlife large and small.

Other county "plans" need to be fulfilled, too, such as the Cheaspeake Bay Protection Ordinance, the Accotink Creek Watershed Plan, and the Fairfax County Tree Plan. All these plans sanguinely assure the preservation of trees and streams while other County, Commonwealth, and private interests continue to clear them away. Why should the environmental preservation mandates of these other plans not take priority?

Improved opportunities for bicycle and pedestrian travel are welcome, but the proposed route of the extension means this opportunity would come at the expense of forests and streams. We have plenty of streets that need to be made people-friendly first!

The comments by Friends of Accotink Creek to Fairfax County supervisors, below, are a statement of the principles we hope to see applied whenever we are faced with the temptation to take “just one more bite”, to lay just one more burden on our irreplaceable natural heritage.

Let your supervisor know this is not the way to use our natural or financial resources:
Contact Fairfax County to send a message!

Detail from the Countywide Trails Plan showing proposed paved trails crossing the Long Branch south stream valley where today there are none.

This is the vision we should pursue, as laid out in the ActiveFairfax concept.

Video examination of the isuues

An exploration of available alternate routes
Bikeway or Waterway?
Bikeway vs. Climate Change

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure some of them are dirt." - John Muir