The Maryland Department of Transportation in November funded a plan to connect the B&A Trail in Arnold to AACC.

The state assigned $200,760 for the design of improvements to the B&A walking and hiking trial. The project eventually will connect the path to AACC and to the Broadneck Peninsula Trail.

The connector will be located at College Parkway along the main entrance of the college.

The connector would create “more opportunities for walking,” Deborah Hammond, assistant professor of health, fitness and exercise studies and adviser of the Health and Wellness Club at AACC, said. “It would encourage students to walk to school.”

Hammond said the connector would allow more opportunity for students to walk in a safe environment to school.

“As a person who walks to school almost every day, the trail would help a lot because there’s currently not sufficient sidewalk space on College Parkway so I have to walk through neighborhoods, extending the time it takes me to get to school,” freshman Zachary Tennant said.

Hammond also said this connector would allow her students in the Health and Wellness Club to extend their field trips and activities to places off campus.

Members of the Health and Wellness Club and Adventure Society Club use the trails already on campus.

“Just having the connector would be beneficial,” Health and Wellness Club member and psychology major Francesca Vertucci said.

“[It would] really attract a lot of people. Any way to get people more physically active.”

Construction on the B&A Trail Connector will begin in fiscal year 2017, according to Anne Arundel County.