The Trolley Trail Preservation Group is

We are a group of over 430 Palisades residents. Families who have raised our children in Palisades, attended Key School, biked down Potomac Ave to access the Capital Crescent Trail to watch inaugurations, young children and elderly who have donned rubber boots to walk our dogs on the trail when it's raining. We are former Palisades Citizens Association Presidents, former Key School PTA Presidents and Committee Chairs, former DCPS LSRT Chairs, and neighborhood volunteers. We have taught our children to ride their bikes on this trail, and we have held birthday parties and frisbee golf games there. We are joining together as a neighborhood to make it better--filling holes, planting clover, unearthing drains, and making plans to plant native species and work on drainage

Porous Asphalt or Stabilized Decomposed Granite surfaces. Both are glued-together surfaces. (Please see photos below for examples.) DDOT has stated in writing these are the only two surfaces they will consider and there are no “middle ground” options. We are therefore advocating “no change” to the trail.

There are two stages to this trail redevelopment. The first, and most imminent, is the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of the Pedestrian Bridge and Connecting Trail at Arizona Avenue, NW (from Galena to Nebraska Ave.)  The second, which is just in the feasibility stage, is the Palisades Trolley Trail and Foundry Trestle Bridge Feasibility Study (which would span from Galena Place to Georgetown.)

• Save taxpayers $15M
  • Why should taxpayers spend $15M-$20M to pave a trail to Georgetown when a trail already exists, just 100 yards away? (Capital Crescent Trail)
• Get quicker, cheaper bike access to Georgetown
  • Give the Palisades access to the Capital Crescent Trail from Arizona Avenue NOW by choosing DDOT’s common sense solution: the Capital Crescent Trail Connector project which costs just $560,000. Why make us wait 5-10 years for the city to undergo a $15M-$20M project—including building three new bridges and paving in forested areas--when we can get access now?
• Save our green trail 
  • The Trolley Trail provides the only grass path in the heart of the Palisades. To pave acres of natural grass, just one block from where we suffered dangerous flooding from run-off in July (see WaPo front page) doesn’t make sense.. Moreover, NOAA’s Heat Map of DC shows the Palisades area being one of the coolest in DC, because we have more green and less paving, which benefits the entire District. DC needs more green and trees, not less.

Yes, the trail isn't in perfect condition. Nature isn't perfect! Not everything needs to be paved. Grass is beautiful and critical to the biodiversity to our green, tree-lined neighborhood. Rails to Trails doesn't need to mean paved or resurfaced. It can mean grass! Part of our mission is to harness volunteer energy to repair parts of the trail and improve its condition. We've already held 3 work parties with 58 volunteers in less than 3 months. We would love to do much, much more.

The landscaping around the Palisades Park playground, the median strip along Macarthur Boulevard, and the gardens and grounds of Key School have all been maintained by amazing Palisades volunteers and families for decades. We live in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the city, and our neighbors and green spaces have helped make it that way!

We don't know exactly, because to date DDOT has not made us aware of having conducted an environmental impact survey. We do know this: our native fireflies bury in the soil. So do 80% of bee species, all of whom are in danger of disappearing. Our hearty Palisades bird population takes their needed dust baths there in the dead leaves. Displacing such a large amount of soil with a glued-together artificial non-grass surface will affect insects, as well as nearby trees. “The root network is in charge of all chemical activity [of a] tree.” (1) “There are more life forms in a handful of...soil than there are people on the planet...Miles of fungal filaments...work the soil, transform it, and make it so valuable for the trees.” (2) (Wohlleben, Peter: The Hidden Life of Trees, 2015)