Ask most people who ride the Tammany Trace every week what's going on with it right now, and they'll tell you about the bridge that's out near Abita Springs. Ask them if they know about the second one, over on the Mandeville side between Molitor and Dupre Streets, and you'll usually get a blank look. Both are true at once this fall: the Trace, all 31 miles of it end to end, cannot currently be ridden without a detour, and that fact is reshaping how the corridor actually gets used, not just how far you can pedal on a Saturday morning.
That's worth sitting with, because the story most people tell about the Trace this year is either "it's under construction, annoying" or "nothing's changed, same trail as always." Neither is quite right. What's actually happening is that St. Tammany Parish is rebuilding trail infrastructure in two places simultaneously while a wave of new restaurants and bars has opened along the route in Mandeville and Covington, and a packed fall calendar of free concerts and street festivals is drawing people to the trailheads on both ends. The trail is temporarily shorter. The reasons to stop along it are not.
Why You Can't Ride It Straight Through Right Now
The bigger of the two projects is at Abita Springs, where the Trace crosses the Abita River. Construction on a full bridge replacement began March 30, 2026, according to St. Tammany Parish's own Tammany Trace project page, and the parish expects the work to wrap by the end of 2026. A temporary bridge is in place through the closure, accessed through the city park in Abita Springs, so the trail isn't fully severed there, but riders report rough transitions where the detour meets the permanent path.
The second closure is newer and less talked about. Bridge #14, located on the Mandeville side between Molitor Street and Dupre Street, has a posted timeline running from August 17 into early 2027, per the same parish page. That's a longer runway than the Abita Springs work, and it means the two projects only barely overlap this fall before the Abita bridge is scheduled to reopen and the Mandeville one keeps going into next year.
| Project | Location | Started | Expected done | What it means for riders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bridge over the Abita River | Between Gordon Avenue and the Abita Springs Trailhead | March 30, 2026 | End of 2026 | Temporary bridge in place through Abita city park; usable but not seamless |
| Bridge #14 | Mandeville, between Molitor and Dupre Streets | August 17, 2026 | Early 2027 | Runs longer than the Abita project; overlaps with it only through this fall |
Neither closure shuts the Trace down. Both mean that a rider planning the classic Covington-to-Slidell or Covington-to-Mandeville out-and-back this fall should expect to route around two separate work zones rather than one, and should expect the second one to still be there well after the first is finished.
The Businesses That Didn't Wait for the Bridges
While the trail itself has been mid-repair, the corridor around it has kept filling in. A run of new restaurants has opened in Mandeville and Covington over the past several months, several of them close enough to the Trace or its trailheads to function as natural stopping points rather than separate destinations:
- Mantra Indian Cuisine in Mandeville, the area's first dedicated Indian restaurant
- Joe's Pizza & Pasta in Covington, occupying the former DiCristina's location
- Aperitif Spritz + Bites on the Mandeville lakefront, a tapas and spritz spot with lake views
- Jack's Bistro in Mandeville, a small European-inspired cafe
- The Hampshire in downtown Covington, positioned for a more formal night out
- Noir Bistrot in Mandeville, French-inspired and intimate
- Feliciana on Gibson Street in Covington, another French-leaning addition
- Lumora in Covington, known for cocktails alongside its food menu
None of these openings are tied to the bridge projects. They're happening on their own timeline, driven by the same demand that's kept the Trace one of the busier rail-trails in the state since it was inducted into the Rails-to-Trails Hall of Fame in 2017. But the timing matters for how the corridor reads right now. A trail that's temporarily broken into shorter, ride-able sections is still worth riding if each section ends somewhere worth eating. This fall, more of them do than did a year ago.
What's Actually on the Calendar
Two dated events anchor the fall season this year, and both are confirmed for specific weekends rather than the vague "sometime in October" that a lot of neighborhood roundups settle for.
Nightmare on Columbia returns to downtown Covington on Saturday, October 24, 2026. It's a ticketed sip-and-stroll down Columbia Street with craft cocktails and beer served by local businesses, a costume contest, and a free concert to close out the night at the Covington Trailhead. Proceeds benefit the Three Rivers Art Festival, which gives the event a direct line to the bigger festival that follows it a few weeks later.
That bigger event is the Covington Three Rivers Art Festival, running Saturday and Sunday, November 14-15, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. This is the festival's 30th year, and it takes over the 200 to 600 blocks of Columbia Street with more than 200 juried artists working in everything from ceramics to metalwork to fine jewelry. Admission is free.
Beyond those two dated events, the corridor's regular free concert series are part of the fall rhythm whether or not you check a calendar. Mandeville Live! runs Friday evenings at the Mandeville Trailhead through September and October, and Rockin' the Rails does the same on Thursdays at the Covington Trailhead. Both are the kind of low-key, blanket-and-lawn-chair events that don't need a headline act to be worth showing up for, and both sit close enough to the Trace that a Friday evening ride can end at one without much planning.
What This Means If You Ride the Trace Every Week
Put the pieces together and the honest read on this fall is that the Trace is less of a through-trail and more of a set of connected neighborhoods right now, and that's not entirely a downgrade. If you're riding from the Mandeville Trailhead, the Saturday morning market and amphitheater are still there, Aperitif Spritz + Bites and Jack's Bistro are new enough to be worth the detour, and the Molitor-to-Dupre closure means you'll want to check which direction is actually open before you commit to a route. If you're starting from Covington, the Abita Springs bridge work means the western stretch runs through a temporary crossing rather than the original trestle, but Joe's Pizza & Pasta, The Hampshire, Feliciana, and Lumora give you more reason than usual to treat the ride as a series of short stops instead of a single long one.
The bigger picture is that the Trace's popularity hasn't paused for construction. If anything, the fact that two separate bridge projects are underway at once says the parish is treating ongoing maintenance on a 30-plus-year-old trail as routine rather than emergency, which is a healthier sign for the corridor's long-term condition than a trail that never needs work at all. The businesses opening around it in the meantime suggest the same thing from the other direction: nobody's waiting for the infrastructure to be perfect before betting on the neighborhood.
If you're weighing what it actually means to live along a corridor like this, whether that's a stretch of Old Mandeville within walking distance of the lakefront or a Covington block close enough to hear the Thursday night music from your porch, that's exactly the kind of question worth talking through with someone who watches this market closely. The Kathryn Collection works across the North Shore and the rest of the greater New Orleans area, and a free consultation is a good place to start if you're curious how a specific block or neighborhood fits the life you're trying to build.
