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County officials will push for capital funding in next year's budget to continue a long-delayed bike trail that would run from downtown Silver Spring to downtown Washington, D.C., but residents say the county's efforts are overdue.

After preliminary designs for the Metropolitan Branch Trail, also known as the Georgetown Branch Trail, were completed three years ago, transportation officials said the project halted because it would be affected by the different proposed alignments for the Purple Line, a planned rapid-transit route between New Carrollton and Bethesda.

"If we didn't have an exact [Purple Line] alignment, we couldn't create the concepts," said Gail Tait-Nouri, the Montgomery County bicycle coordinator with the Department of Transportation. "[The Maryland Transit Administration has] to make decisions so we know our design constraints."

The Metropolitan Branch Trail would connect with the Capital Crescent Trail, a route that extends from Bethesda to Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and run through the Silver Spring Metro station, Takoma Park and back to the District near Union Station.

Uncertainty with the Purple Line also put negotiations for property acquisition along the trail on hold, Tait-Nouri said. Montgomery County owns rights of way from Bethesda to Stewart Avenue in Lyttonsville. But from there, CSX owns the right of way to the 16th Street bridge, and WMATA and private landowners own property along the proposed trail, as well.

Now, with Gov. Martin O'Malley set to make a decision on a Purple Line alignment shortly and Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) taking suggestions through December for the county's Capital Improvements Program for fiscal 2011-2012, officials are looking to step forward with the trail.

"Now's the time to finish this while all these things are being done," said Councilwoman Valerie Ervin (D-Dist. 5) of Silver Spring, who sent a letter to DOT in April urging progress on the trail. "… The county has waited too long on this."

Ervin took office in 2006 — too late in the biennial CIP process to advocate for trail funding in the last CIP. But she soon heard from residents who demanded the long-awaited project be completed.

"This is the lynchpin bicycle project and it's not just for biking and walking," Darian Unger, chairman of the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board, said in a telephone interview Thursday shortly after lobbying the County Council to fund the trail. "We want to make Silver Spring a more livable community, and this is key to that. … A project this important shouldn't take this long."

The trail would provide a cohesive bike trail in the Metro area and would allow residents to access the Silver Spring Metro station — and the $91 million Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center which is currently under construction in downtown Silver Spring — without using a car.

Some residents in the Woodside neighborhood of Silver Spring couldn't wait for the county to build a trail, and marked off their own pathway from Third Avenue and Noyes Lane to Spring Street, parallel to the proposed route for the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Silver Spring resident Casey Anderson bikes down Georgia Avenue daily to his job in downtown Washington. He said he is an experienced cyclist, but still, "it's a harrowing experience."

Anderson, a board member of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, said the District has begun construction on its portion of the trail. And with Leggett and the Montgomery County Council already agreeing on an alignment for the Purple Line earlier this year, it's "intensely frustrating" that design on the project won't resume until fiscal 2011, Anderson said.

"It's not like this is an obscure project. … This is arguably one of the two or three most important bike projects in the entire D.C. region," said Anderson, who suggested DOT begin work on portions of the trail not affected by CSX or the Purple Line.

DOT spokeswoman Esther Bowring said that due to the cost of the project, it wouldn't be efficient to take a "piecemeal approach." DOT would not disclose how much it will ask for in the next CIP.