New Bike Route Planned for Catonsville

Baltimore County officials unveiled a plan to develop a spur of the Short Line Trail into a bicycle route that will allow riders to travel from Frederick Road to .

County Executive Kevin Kamenetz announced a $100,000 design grant from the Maryland Bikeways Program, part of the Governor's Cycle Maryland Initiative, to develop the trail.

The Short Line Trail is a path about two miles long that straddles the Beltway, the remaining trace of a railroad line that meandered through Catonsville and Paradise to the main line near Louden Park Cemetery, according to Catonsville Rails to Trails.

As envisioned, the bicycle route would follow Mellor Avenue from Frederick Road, down Asylum through a tunnel beneath Bloomsbury Avenue that CRTR will restore, and along Spring Grove property to Valley Road, leading to UMBC.

The route is a link in a through the area that will connect Catonsville and Arbutus, along with destinations such as the Catonsville High School, MARC Halethorpe Station, Bloomsbury Community Center, Wilkens Beltway Plaza and Charlestown Retirement Community.

Last October, to designate bicycle lanes on Edmonson Avenue. In January of this year, the to develop a bicycle route from UMBC through Arbutus to the MARC Halethorpe Station.

County officials did not provide a timetable for design and development of the Catonsville-UMBC bicycle route.