For years, riding the Truman Linear Trail from Lake Mayer Park has meant the same thing: smooth concrete, decent shade, then a stop. The path parallels Truman Parkway and the Casey Canal for a little over three miles before it simply ends, dumping walkers and cyclists back onto city streets with no connection north. Anyone who has ridden it more than once knows the spot. According to trail reviewers who log the route regularly, the abrupt stop and a few unlit stretches are the two complaints that come up again and again.
That gap is closer to closing than most people who live near it realize. As of the city's own construction update this past March, the paving on the missing 1.9-mile segment, known as Phase 2B, was already finished. What's left isn't permitting or right-of-way fights. It's punch-list work: bridge finishing along the 52nd Street crossing, general cleanup, sod, and fencing in a few sections, with Georgia Power handling the lighting install. The city's stated target was June 2026, which puts this piece roughly three months past that date. If the schedule held, the dead end current riders know so well is already gone. If it slipped, as plenty of Savannah infrastructure timelines have, it's close enough now that anyone checking should get an answer in weeks, not years.
Either way, this is a different situation than the one Southside has watched play out for the better part of two decades. The concrete is on the ground.
What Phase 2B Actually Connects
The segment begins near DeRenne Avenue and Reuben Clark Drive and runs north to the 52nd Street bridge. On paper that's a short stretch. In practice it's the piece that turns three disconnected trail sections into one continuous route:
- Phase 1, the Police Memorial Trail, already built and open, running toward Daffin Park
- Phase 2A, the existing Lake Mayer connector, already built and open
- Phase 2B, the 1.9-mile gap between them, now in its final finish stage
Once 2B closes, regional project documentation describes the result as a continuous seven-mile off-road route for both recreation and commuting. Layer in the Lake Mayer Loop Path at the south end and the Daffin Park Trail Loop at the north end, and the connected network runs to roughly nine miles, linking two of Chatham County's largest park holdings: the roughly 750-acre Bacon Regional Park Tract that includes Lake Mayer, and the 77-acre Daffin Park, without a single stretch on a public street.
That's the part worth sitting with. Southside residents who currently drive to Daffin Park for a change of scenery, or who load bikes onto a rack to ride somewhere other than the same mile-and-a-half loop around Lake Mayer, are looking at a route that gets them there under their own power. No trail reviewer described that as an abrupt ending. They described it as the ending, period, since the current segment's ribbon-cutting in November 2020.
Why This Took as Long as It Did
None of this is new to Savannah. The idea for a linear park along the Casey Canal corridor goes back to the 1970s. It resurfaced in the 1992 Chatham County/Savannah Bikeway Plan, again in the 1996 Chatham County Open Space Plan, and again in a 1997 regional master plan from the Coastal Georgia Land Trust. Federal transportation funding of just over a million dollars arrived in 2005. The Savannah Bicycle Campaign, now Bike Walk Savannah, started pushing for construction in 2008 and made it the organization's top advocacy priority by 2013, later joined by Healthy Savannah, according to Tide to Town's project history.
Even with all that groundwork, the trail almost didn't get built for a mundane reason: money. The city applied twice for funding through the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program and got turned down both times. The project that finally unlocked construction dollars wasn't a grant. It was a hotel/motel tax increase that required approval from the Georgia General Assembly before the city could use it, eventually generating $10 million for the broader Tide to Town trail network plus additional funding for pedestrian and bicycle connections on the west side. The Phase 2B construction contract wasn't approved until a February 2024 city council meeting, sixteen years after Bike Walk Savannah started asking for it.
That history matters for one reason. A resident who has heard "this trail is coming" for most of their adult life has good reason to be skeptical of any new announcement. The difference this time is that the update isn't a plan or a funding request. It's a construction status report describing finished pavement and a punch list.
What Changes for People Already Living Here
The existing, already-open portion of the Truman Linear Trail comes with a wide concrete surface, a timber boardwalk section, two bridges, lighting, security cameras, and emergency call boxes along most of its length, plus parking at Lake Mayer Park. Those are the features already built into Phase 1 and Phase 2A. Regional planning documents describe Phase 2B as being built to the same shared-use standard, a 10-foot-wide concrete path, with the City of Savannah managing construction and Georgia Power currently handling the lighting install.
What's genuinely new is the option to treat the trail as a way to get somewhere rather than a loop you ride and turn around on. Right now, someone starting at Lake Mayer Park, with its playground, tennis courts, skate park, and fishing access, can ride the existing 3.1-mile stretch north, pass the Scarborough Sports Complex, and then stop. Once 2B opens, that same ride continues past the 52nd Street bridge and connects into the Police Memorial Trail toward Daffin Park. For a household on the Southside, that's the difference between a fitness loop and an actual point-to-point route connecting two ends of the city.
It also changes the calculation for anyone who bikes to avoid driving on DeRenne or Abercorn during peak traffic. A commuting option that doesn't require crossing either of those roads on pavement shared with cars is a different daily routine than one that does.
The Honest Caveat
Nobody following this project for the past six years should take a June completion date as gospel without checking. Savannah's trail projects have a track record of finish dates that move. What's changed is the nature of the remaining work. Lighting conduit installation, sod, and fencing are the kind of items that get wrapped up in a matter of weeks, not the kind that stall for years waiting on a funding source or a redesign. If you're planning a ride specifically to test the new connection, a quick check of the city's Truman Linear Trail Phase 2B project page before you head out will save you a wasted trip if a section is still roped off.
I grew up on the Southside and lived here for most of my life before moving to Effingham County a few years ago to be closer to family. This stretch of trail runs through the version of Savannah I know best, past the same lake where I learned to ride a bike and past streets that have changed more in the last decade than in the twenty before it. Watching a project this many decades in the making finally reach its last few punch-list items feels different than reading another funding announcement.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood actually offers day to day, not just what a listing photo shows, this is the kind of detail that belongs in the conversation. Whether you're already settled on the Southside or thinking about what daily life here looks like beyond the drive time to work, I'm happy to talk through it.
Georgia Homes by Lisa is one call away. Let's Connect.
