Two miles of the Custis Trail are noticeably smoother than they were back in March. If you run, bike, or walk the corridor most weekday mornings, you've probably felt it: fewer of the tree-root heaves that used to catch a stroller wheel or a road bike's front tire. What's easy to miss, unless you keep riding west past Lyon Village, is exactly where that new pavement ends.

As ARLnow reported, Arlington County closed and repaved the stretch in three phases this spring. The first section, from North Oak Street to 21st Street North near Mom's Organic Market, closed March 30 through April 3. A second stretch, running from North Lincoln Street through Hayes Park to Langston Boulevard in Lyon Village, closed April 6 through 13. A short connector between Langston and 21st Street North wrapped the work on April 13, and the whole two-mile span reopened the next day, two days ahead of the original schedule thanks to a stretch of good weather. County crews called it milling and repaving, the standard fix for a trail surface that's cracked and buckled with age.

That fix covers the trail's eastern approach, the flatter urban stretch closer to Rosslyn. It stops well short of the trail's hardest mile.

Where the New Pavement Actually Sits

The Custis Trail runs 4.5 miles total, from Rosslyn's Key Bridge on the east end to Bon Air Park, where it meets the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, on the west. The spring project touched roughly the first two miles of that span, the section closest to Rosslyn and Lyon Village. It didn't extend past Langston Boulevard.

Here's roughly how the corridor breaks down if you're planning a fall ride or run on it:

The trail's highest point, 299 feet in elevation near the North Harrison Street overpass west of Ballston, sits entirely outside the repaved zone. So does the trail's steepest sustained climb, the section cyclists and runners tend to complain about most when they're heading west, away from the river. That pavement dates to the original construction, when the Virginia Department of Transportation built the trail alongside I-66 between 1977 and 1982 as a condition of getting the highway approved. It's held up for over four decades. It shows.

The County Is Asking What Comes Next

Arlington's Department of Parks and Recreation has framed the spring work as routine maintenance, part of its annual trail and bridge upkeep program rather than a full rebuild. Separately, the county has an active Custis Trail Needs Assessment underway, reviewing the entire corridor from its junction with the W&OD Trail at the western edge of the county to its terminus at the Mount Vernon Trail near Key Bridge.

Local advocates pushing for that assessment have been blunt about why it matters: the trail's pavement is near the end of its useful life, and its design predates current standards for safety, comfort, and stormwater handling. That's a different conversation than resurfacing. A resurfacing job smooths what's there. A redesign would touch grading, sightlines at the trail's blind curves near I-66, and how water moves off the path during a storm. Nothing in the current county materials points to a redesign already funded or scheduled. What's happening now is data collection, residents and trail users weighing in on where the corridor falls short.

If you use the Custis regularly, this is the moment your specific complaint about a blind curve or a washed-out shoulder actually has somewhere to go.

Skipping the Hill Entirely

Riders who'd rather not test the unrepaved climb have had a workaround for decades. The Bluemont Junction Trail branches off near Ballston and runs southwest for about 1.2 miles to Bluemont Junction Park, bypassing the Custis's steepest section entirely before rejoining the W&OD Trail. The route follows an old Washington and Old Dominion Railway spur line, and the junction point itself has been turned into a 15-acre park with picnic areas, ball fields, and a retired caboose marking the site's rail history. Combined with segments of the Custis and W&OD trails, it forms a roughly 3.2-mile loop that starts and ends near the Ballston Metro station, flatter and shadier than the direct route, and a reasonable substitute if the goal is exercise rather than the climb itself.

Ballston is also where the trail's everyday texture keeps shifting. The Starbucks that used to anchor the Metro entrance closed this year, and Java Loco, a boba cafe, has moved into the space. It's a small swap, but it's the kind of thing that tells you foot traffic through that trailhead hasn't slowed down.

The Rosslyn End Just Had Its Biggest Weekend of the Year

At the trail's eastern terminus, Gateway Park hosted the 34th Rosslyn Jazz Fest on September 12, Arlington's largest free outdoor music festival, run by the Rosslyn Business Improvement District alongside Arlington Arts. This year's lineup ran from Puerto Rican plena group Plena Libre to New Orleans-rooted soul jazz act Parlor Greens to Togolese fusion outfit Dogo du Togo and the Alagaa Beat Band, drawing crowds into the park from noon to seven in the evening. The festival sits right where the Custis Trail meets the Mount Vernon Trail, so for a few hours that Saturday, the quietest stretch of pavement in the whole corridor was anything but.

The same three Saturdays in September also brought volunteers out to a different part of the loop. The Friends of Mount Vernon Trail organized work sessions on September 12, 19, and 26 at Theodore Roosevelt Island, Riverside Park, and Gravelly Point as part of National Public Lands Day, clearing invasive ivy and vegetation along the fence line near the trail's entrance. It's routine upkeep, the kind that doesn't make headlines, but it's happening on the same connected system that carries you from Rosslyn down to the Potomac and back if you keep riding past the Custis's western trailhead.

What This Actually Means If You Use the Trail

None of this changes whether the Custis Trail is worth riding this fall. It is, and the eastern two miles ride better than they have in years. But if your usual route includes the climb toward Ballston, or if you've been putting off that stretch because of how rough it's gotten, know that the resurfacing didn't reach it. The smoother pavement stops at Langston Boulevard. Past that point, you're still on the same surface that's been there since the Reagan administration, and the conversation about replacing it is still in the input-gathering stage, not the construction stage.

The Bluemont Junction spur remains the easiest way around the problem if you're not attached to the direct route. Either way, this is one of the more heavily used pieces of infrastructure in the county, connecting commuters and casual riders alike from Rosslyn all the way out to the W&OD's full run toward Purcellville, and its next chapter is still being written by the people who use it.

If you're out on the Custis or the Bluemont spur this fall and want to talk about anything happening in the neighborhoods along it, the team at Haim & Heinen Group is easy to find, and always glad to compare notes on what's changing in Arlington.