By BODE RAMSAY
PHOTO CREDIT: Bode Ramsay
The annual Trolley Trail Day, an event featuring music, arts and crafts, and food to encourage the use of hiking and biking paths, drew its largest crowd ever June 8, nearly doubling the total number of people from last year.
The activities brought a flurry of life to an already regularly busy path, with about 2,700 cyclists and walkers filling the 3.8-mile length of the trail, which stretches from College Park to Hyattsville.
“I’m really excited to see that growth and that kind of love for this trail,” Valerie Woodall, associate director of the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area organization, said. Trolley Trail Day “can help showcase why trail connections in Prince George’s County are really pivotal to communities.”
The event featured 10 activity hubs along the trail, each staffed by a local business and offering activities.
Residents from communities along the trail took advantage of good weather and good fun along the trail, which was lined for the day with bands, bounce houses, arts and crafts activities and playgrounds.
“Anytime you can coax the kids out onto the bike trail is nice,” Hyattsville resident Jennifer Brandi said. “My youngest son likes the music, so he came out for that.”
Buckets full of chalk near a hub in Riverdale Park drew kids who brought the trail’s asphalt sections to life with their drawings.
By the end of the day, the asphalt was covered with chalk drawings of larger-than-life flowers, fish, cartoon characters and uplifting messages.
“The Trolly Trail is a great amenity for people with kids,” County Councilmember Eric Olson (District 3) said. “Taking them out on a bike or in a stroller or in a wagon and stopping at different playgrounds is a joy [for them]. … On Trolley Trail Day, there’s also lots of arts and crafts.”
Adults engaged in activities such as the Arrow Bicycles Brewery Ride, which routed residents to local pubs and distilleries, and shopping at tents that local businesses had set up at each hub.
To top off the day, the College Park Aviation Museum hosted a wrap party with a Night at the Museum Rock Concert, which attracted more than 500 people. The party included food, ice cream and adult beverages.
College Park Mayor Fazlul Kabir called the day “wonderful.”
“It is wonderful that we are connected by this Trolley Trail,” Kabir said. “It’s a wonderful event because it’s a kind of relaxed way of bringing the communities together.”
Kabir, a cyclist, said he most enjoyed the morning group ride he took along the trail, where he was able to see many of the hubs and meet residents living in communities along the way.
Other attendees seemed to share Kabir’s vibrant sense of community along the trail as they walked the path.
“I feel like communities have become very disconnected for many, many reasons, and so I really appreciate that they’re trying to create a bigger College Park that connects everybody,” College Park resident Margaret Walker said.
Trolley Trail Day launched in 2019 with the expressed goal of bringing neighboring communities together while promoting the trail to cyclists and walkers.
Despite a three-year hiatus forced by the pandemic from 2020 to 2022, the event has steadily grown in size, with both residents and local businesses turning out in larger numbers. Eighty businesses attended this year, compared with 60 last year.
Event organizers said they hope to increase the number of participants and businesses for next year’s Trolley Trail Day.
