On the western side of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge, you can walk or bike from BWI Marshall Airport to Sandy Point State Park, which sits at the foot of the massive spans.

And on the east side of the bridge, the Cross Island Trail starts at Terrapin Nature Park on Kent Island and runs about five miles over the old Kent Narrows Bridge.

“They’re staring at each other from opposite sides of the bay begging to be connected so people can ride,” Jon Korin, president of Bicycle Advocates For Annapolis And Anne Arundel County, told The Banner ahead of a public meeting to determine the design of a new Bay Bridge.

The Maryland Transportation Authority estimates that building such a multi-use path on the new Bay Bridge would add about $1 billion to a price tag already as high as $16.4 billion. At Tuesday’s meeting at Anne Arundel County’s Broadneck High School, state officials presented two visions of the bridge: one with the path and one without.

Korin and other bicycle advocates, several toting bike helmets, attended Tuesday’s hearing to deliver an unequivocal message to transportation officials: The proposed bicycle and pedestrian path over the next Bay Bridge should be mandatory.

“We get a once-in-a-multigenerational opportunity to provide trail crossings like this. We can’t let it go,” Korin told transportation officials during his official testimony. “It’s a critical gap in a statewide trail network.”

Korin noted that advocates have visions on the eastern side of the bridge to connect the Cross Island Trail to a vast network of Eastern Shore bicycle and pedestrian paths. All that would be missing if that becomes reality, he said, is something to safely connect it to the more populous western shore.

Several of Korin’s fellow bike enthusiasts scoffed at the state’s estimated price tag for the bike path, saying they couldn’t imagine it would cost $1 billion-plus for a couple extra feet of concrete on a bridge the state wants to reconstruct with eight car travel lanes. They called for transportation officials to conduct a supplemental analysis, and one that considers more than cost.

“It needs to quantify the benefits,” said Jim Titus, of Glenn Dale in Prince George’s County. “How can you know if the trail is worth $1.3 billion without quantifying what we get?”

Titus said he believed the project’s environmental footprint would be reduced with a bicycle and pedestrian path, suggesting it could decrease motor-vehicle trips across the bridge. Transportation officials should have to consider that, he said, as electric bikes grow increasingly popular in the years to come.

Rebuilding the bridge, which carries about 27 million vehicles per year, is a massive undertaking.

Tuesday’s meeting represented a small milestone in the process, with officials soliciting feedback on the state’s preferred bridge-replacement proposal. Another is scheduled Thursday on Kent Island. The MDTA hopes to receive final approval, including from federal environmental regulators, for its proposal by November 2026. Then it can pursue a design.

Other bike enthusiasts who spoke Tuesday pointed out relatively recent U.S. bridge reconstructions that featured bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

Severna Park resident Mike Binnix said he’s ridden his bicycle on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac River, calling that bike and pedestrian path “wildly popular.”

Binnix, who is a member of Korin’s organization, said America’s infrastructure encourages people to buy cars to get around.

“We have got to change a culture that impoverishes our kids from an early age,” said Binnix, adding that he believed the new Bay Bridge was a “a once-in-every-two-generations opportunity.”

Eric Leshinsky, chief of comprehensive planning for the City of Annapolis, agreed.

“We’ve been planning our region for the last 60 or so years primarily for one mode of transportation: the personal automobile,” Leshinsky told officials.

He said residents are “increasingly” looking for other options. A shared-use path over the Bay Bridge, he said, “could be transformative.”

Not all agreed, however.

“I really do not think at that price the shared-use path on the bridge is worth it,” said Dale Wittig, who lives near Sandy Point State Park.

He said he’s seen “surprisingly minimal” usage of the Broadneck Peninsula Trail, which connects Sandy Point to the B&A Trail.

That might be, Korin later explained, because Anne Arundel County’s Department of Recreation and Parks hasn’t opened it officially.

Wittig’s neighbor, Arnold resident Robert Wallace, disagreed with him. Wallace encouraged officials to make the shared-use path “mandatory.”

“I truly think it will turn into a tourist destination, meaning it will be a big asset to the state,” Wallace testified.

David Lever also calls the Broadneck Peninsula home.

Roads on the peninsula have gotten clogged in the summer because of beachgoers, he said, and “morning and evening traffic is getting steadily worse during rush hour.”

Calling alternatives to car traffic “a necessity,” Lever testified that transportation alternatives “should be a main focus of the study” of the new bridge.

“This will be the icon of Maryland,” Lever said. “I believe it will replace the blue crab.”