If you've walked the Capital Crescent Trail under the old aqueduct in the past several months, you probably noticed the orange fencing before you noticed anything else. Where the trail used to slide quietly along the Potomac toward Georgetown, there is now a construction zone, a shared lane for the Washington Canoe Club, and a set of rumble strips guiding bikers around a hole in the ground that will not close for years.
Most people who live in the Palisades or Spring Valley corridor have already adjusted their route without thinking too hard about why. Here is the why, and here is the part that surprises even longtime trail users: the segment near your neighborhood is on a completely different construction clock than the one making headlines about the trail "reopening."
What's Actually Under the Aqueduct
DC Water is in the middle of building the Potomac River Tunnel, an underground structure designed to capture combined sewer overflow before it reaches the river. The construction site sits west of the Potomac Aqueduct, right where the Capital Crescent Trail threads past the Washington Canoe Club and Potomac Boat Club on its way into Georgetown.
In January 2026, DC Water opened a temporary detour through Georgetown Waterfront Park, routing cyclists between 33rd and Potomac Streets NW and sending pedestrians onto the riverfront path between 34th Street and Cecil Place. Then in early May, the agency pushed the work zone further south toward the river and opened another temporary trail segment near the Aqueduct itself, this one built with rumble strips, traffic mirrors, and overhead protection so trail users and Canoe Club visitors can share the narrow space with construction traffic. Crews began drilling reinforced steel columns, called secant piles, the following week, a phase expected to run about four months. That puts the noisiest part of this work squarely in the middle of the summer you're in right now.
Parking restrictions have also settled in on the south side of Water Street NW in front of the Potomac Boat Club, and they're not temporary in the way a lane closure for a weekend festival is temporary. DC Water's own project materials put the tunnel's operational date at 2030.
Two Trails, Two Timelines
Here's where the confusion sets in. The Capital Crescent Trail also has a well-known closure on its Maryland end, between Bethesda and Silver Spring, where the Purple Line light rail has kept the old rail corridor fenced off since September 2017. The Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail has that Maryland segment reopening tentatively in fall 2026 as a paved, mostly grade-separated path running alongside the new rail line.
That fall 2026 date has circulated widely enough that it's easy to assume the whole trail is coming back to normal this year. It isn't. The Bethesda to Silver Spring reopening and the Georgetown construction near the Aqueduct are unrelated projects run by different agencies on different timelines, and they happen to share a name.
| Trail Segment | What's Under Construction | Expected Completion |
|---|---|---|
| Bethesda to Silver Spring | Purple Line light rail (Maryland Transit Administration) | Fall 2026, tentative |
| Georgetown Waterfront Park and Aqueduct area | DC Water Potomac River Tunnel | Tunnel operational 2030 |
For anyone accessing the trail from the Palisades or Spring Valley side, the relevant timeline is the second one. The detour through Georgetown Waterfront Park is not a summer inconvenience you wait out. It's the walk you have for the next several years, at least until the tunnel work finishes and DC Water restores the sitting area near the Aqueduct that it removed to make room for construction vehicles.
The Loop Neighbors Have Settled Into
Once you accept that the detour is semi-permanent, the trail starts to make more sense as a loop rather than a straight shot. A typical Saturday version looks like this:
- Start at the Palisades end near Fletcher's Cove and head toward Georgetown as usual.
- Follow the detour signage through Georgetown Waterfront Park, cyclists on the marked path between 33rd and Potomac Streets, walkers on the riverfront route between 34th and Cecil Place.
- Instead of continuing straight through to the Kennedy Center, cut back up toward MacArthur Boulevard for the second half of the morning.
- On Sundays, time it for the Palisades Farmers Market, open 9am to 1pm at 48th Place NW and MacArthur, before the produce runs low.
The MacArthur Boulevard stretch is doing a lot of the work here, and it's worth knowing what's actually along it. Et Voila, the Belgian-French spot at 5120 MacArthur, added outdoor seating that makes it an easy stop after a walk that ended in a detour rather than a straight finish. Elsewhere on the corridor, Lupo Verde Osteria runs a small Alimentari market alongside its pasta menu, so you can pick up dinner ingredients on the way home instead of just eating out. Claudio's Table serves Neapolitan-style pizza and homemade pasta, and Mac Market, tucked into the Palisades Plaza building at 5185 MacArthur, covers the sandwich-and-coffee end of the corridor. Bistro Aracosia rounds things out with Afghan cuisine that's been a fixture of the strip for years.
All of it falls inside the boundaries that Palisades Main Street, the nonprofit that supports the commercial corridor, maps out as running along Foxhall Road from Reservoir Road to 44th Street and along MacArthur from Loughboro Road to Norton Street. That's not a coincidence. It's the same stretch the trail detour now nudges people through.
If you're coming from the Spring Valley side instead, the loop looks a little different but lands in a similar place. Spring Valley Village, the Colonial Revival commercial cluster that developers W.C. and A.N. Miller began building along Massachusetts Avenue in the late 1930s and that earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, is anchored by Crate & Barrel and sits close enough to walk from the American University end of the trail. Wagshal's Market and Deli, open on Massachusetts Avenue since 1925, and Millie's, known for its Baja-California menu, both fall along that same stretch and give the Spring Valley loop its own reason to exist independent of the Palisades side.
Why This Is the New Normal, Not a Summer Blip
The easy story here would be that construction is annoying and it'll pass. But the timeline doesn't support that. Secant pile drilling that started in May and runs roughly four months means the loudest phase of this work overlaps with the exact weekends you're planning right now, and the tunnel underneath it all won't be finished until 2030. The detour through Georgetown Waterfront Park isn't a placeholder. It's the route.
That's the shift worth understanding if you live along this corridor: the trail hasn't been interrupted so much as it's been permanently rerouted for the better part of a decade, and the businesses along MacArthur and in Spring Valley Village have quietly become part of the actual walk rather than an optional detour from it. Neighbors who used to treat the trail as exercise and the boulevard as a separate errand have started treating them as one loop, because right now, that's what the infrastructure is asking of them.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these small shifts in how a neighborhood actually functions day to day, you already understand something that doesn't show up on a map. That kind of local read is exactly what The Schuman Team brings to every conversation about this corner of the city, whether you're weighing a move or just curious what your home might be worth in a market shaped by details like these. Get Your Home's Value when you're ready to talk.
