Jeff Havener runs from his home in North Hills to Umstead State Park and back most mornings when he's training for a marathon. That's a round trip of more than twenty miles, most of it on trail, almost none of it near a car. Havener is a co-founder and vice chair of Friends of the Raleigh Greenway, known locally as FROG, and he's spent years evangelizing for a system he says few other cities can match for the way it stitches neighborhoods together. He'd know. His day job has him traveling up and down the East Coast, and when people ask if any other city's trail network compares to the Triangle's, he says he has to pause and think about it for a while.
Here's what Havener's daily run doesn't tell you: parts of the greenway he relies on are closed right now, and the map most Raleigh residents carry around in their heads, the one built from years of casual Saturday walks and a few favorite loops, is already out of date. A section of one of the busiest long-distance trails is shut down until the end of 2027. A bridge at Umstead is out. And the city just started construction on a brand-new three-mile connector that will eventually change how thousands of people move through Midtown, but won't be finished for two more years.
If you use these trails, or you're thinking about starting, this is the season to update what you think you know.
What's actually closed right now
The Neuse River Greenway Trail, which normally runs 27.5 miles from Falls Lake Dam toward the Wake and Johnston county line, has a segment between Buffaloe Road Athletic Park and River Bend Park closed from March 9, 2026 through December 31, 2027. The city is replacing roughly 11,400 linear feet of sewer line that runs along the western side of the river, and there's no detour route available for that stretch. If your usual long run or ride follows the Neuse corridor, you're rerouting for the next year and change, not the next few weeks.
Over at William B. Umstead State Park, a section of the Turkey Creek Trail is closed for a bridge replacement. Access between Umstead, the Crabtree Creek Trail, and the parking lot on Ebenezer Church Road stays open, but you can't currently head north into Umstead along Turkey Creek from the Crabtree Creek side. State Parks is coordinating that one, and the signage at the barricades is worth actually reading, since Ebenezer Church Road carries real traffic at 45 miles per hour and isn't meant to double as a detour path.
Neither closure is a surprise if you follow the city's alert page closely. Both are easy to miss if you're going off a mental map you built two summers ago.
The gap that's finally getting filled
While those sections sit closed, the city broke ground this year on something that's been on paper since 2022: the Big Branch Greenway Connector. It's the top-ranked project in Raleigh's 2022 Greenway Master Plan, and it's designed to close a real hole in the network through Midtown, an area that's grown fast but has had limited direct trail access until now.
When finished, the connector will run from the existing Crabtree Creek Trail to Cedar Hills Park, adding more than three miles of new trail. City Council approved three of the six segments last November, funded through the 2022 Parks Bond that voters passed with 73 percent support. The full build is split like this:
- Crabtree Creek Trail to Six Forks Road, funded by the parks bond
- Six Forks Road to Wake Towne Drive, also parks bond funded
- A new multi-modal bridge through Midtown, built by Raleigh Transportation
- The bridge to St. Albans Drive, built by a private developer
- St. Albans Drive to Hardimont Road, parks bond funded
- Hardimont Road to East Millbrook Road, funded by Raleigh Transportation
- East Millbrook Road to Sandy Forks Road, still in a feasibility study funded by the parks bond
More than 7,000 residents already live within a half mile of the proposed route, and city planners expect thousands more once the surrounding development finishes filling in. Construction is scheduled to wrap in late 2028, which means this is a multi-year project, not a quick paving job. If you live in or near Midtown, this is the kind of infrastructure that changes your actual daily options, not just your view.
The interesting part isn't the mileage. It's who's paying for it. A public bond covers most of the connector, but one full segment, the piece running from the new pedestrian bridge to St. Albans Drive, is being built entirely by a private developer. That's become a pattern for how Raleigh grows its trail system now: public money handles the parts that serve existing neighborhoods, and private money picks up the sections tied to new development. It's worth knowing which kind of segment is near you, because it tells you something about how fast it's likely to actually get built.
The whole system started with one guy and a sketchbook
None of this exists by accident, and the origin story explains why the system keeps expanding the way it does. Back in 1972, a recent NC State graduate named William L. Flournoy Jr. presented Raleigh with an outline for a citywide network of public trails, following the city's creeks and floodplains. His pitch wasn't really about recreation. It was about stormwater management and preserving wildlife corridors, with trails as a side benefit. The city created a greenway commission not long after, and four years later approved the first trails along Garner Branch and Lead Mine Creek, near what's now Shelley Lake.
Flournoy grew up exploring the stream corridors near his childhood neighborhood by Five Points, and in a 2017 oral history interview at NC State's D.H. Hill Jr. Library, he traced his whole vision back to that childhood habit of following creeks wherever they led. More than fifty years later, the system he sketched has grown to roughly 120 miles across more than 3,700 acres of protected land, connecting into Cary, Durham, and Morrisville, with long-term plans to eventually reach 250 miles. More than half of Triangle residents already live within a mile of a trailhead.
That history matters because it explains the pattern. The greenway has never been finished. It's been under continuous, deliberate construction for five decades, and the Big Branch Connector is just the current chapter of a project that started with one person walking a creek bed.
Where to actually go this fall
If you want a sure thing while the bigger pieces are under construction, Shelley Lake Park is the reliable answer. The 2.1-mile paved loop around the lake is flat, shaded in most stretches, and wheelchair and stroller accessible, with restrooms and workout stations along the way. The lake itself was formed by the Crabtree Watershed Dam, completed in 1975, so it's almost exactly as old as the greenway system itself. Look for the "Flying Swans" sculpture by artist Stacy Brown near the water, one of several public art pieces the Sertoma Arts Center has helped bring into the park. From the main lot off West Millbrook Road, you can extend the walk onto the Mine Creek Trail or the Snelling Branch Trail toward North Hills if two miles isn't enough.
If you're closer to Southeast Raleigh, the short but useful Gardner Street Greenway Trail connects Jaycee Park to Isabella Cannon Park along eight tenths of a mile of paved surface, a good stitch-together option if you're building a longer neighborhood route rather than driving to a single trailhead.
And if Mine Creek is more your speed, the 4.2-mile trail follows the creek north from its confluence with Crabtree Creek up to Sawmill Road, passing a large granite rock outcrop and connecting into the Shelley Lake Park loop, the Crabtree Creek Greenway, and the East Fork Mine Creek Greenway. It's one of the better options if you want distance without leaving a shaded corridor.
None of these touch the current closures, which makes them safe defaults while the Neuse River and Turkey Creek sections sort themselves out over the next year or so.
The map is a living document, not a souvenir
The lesson in all of this isn't really about trail etiquette or which shoes to wear. It's that a system built by one person's sketch of a creek bed in 1972 is still being actively rebuilt block by block in 2026, funded through a mix of public bonds and private development, closed in places for a year or more, and expanding in others toward a goal that won't be finished before 2028. Treat the greenway map on your phone the way you'd treat a weather forecast, not a deed. Check it before you commit to a long loop, and expect it to look different again by next fall.
If you're the kind of person who tracks this stuff because you love how this city actually works, not because you're shopping for a house, we get it. That's most of what we do here at At Home with Jody, following the small changes that add up to why people love living where they live, whether that's a new trail segment or a neighborhood we haven't written about yet. Take a look at what we've found in Raleigh so far, and if a bigger move ever does end up on your mind, let's talk about your next move.
