BikeTheRail MCP Server

by biketherail Your server? Claim it

answering

BikeTheRail is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. It exposes 4 tools.

Look up U.S. rail-trails: search, nearby trails, trail facts, trailheads and closures.

Uptime history 19 days of history

19 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

91 of 91 checks

Tools

read from the server

266 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check BikeTheRail every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add trails --transport http https://biketherail.org/mcp

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://biketherail.org/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.trails]
url = "https://biketherail.org/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trails": {
      "url": "https://biketherail.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "trails": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://biketherail.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 4

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

trails

search_trails

Find U.S. rail-trails, canal towpaths and greenways by name, state, surface, kind and length. Returns each trail's page URL and slug (for get_trail). With no query, lists the longest trails that match the filters.

trails_near

Trails within a radius of a latitude and longitude, nearest first, with the distance to the closest point of each trail. For a town or address, pass its coordinates. Optional filters as in search_trails.

closures

list_closures

Current trail closures and detours posted by trail managers and agencies, optionally for one state, with the source notice. Trails not listed have no reported closure.

trail

get_trail

One trail's facts (length, surface, states, managing organization, official website, year opened), trailheads with parking, restrooms and water, any current closure, the opening of its "About this trail" article, its numbered sources and its page URL. Takes the slug from search_trails or trails_near.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://biketherail.org/mcp	streamable-http	answering	256 ms	12 min ago

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BikeTheRail — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can BikeTheRail do?

It exposes 4 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: get_trail, list_closures, search_trails, trails_near. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →

Is BikeTheRail working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 266 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect BikeTheRail?

Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.

Does BikeTheRail need an API key?

No. BikeTheRail completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 4 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is BikeTheRail?

It answers our handshake in 266 ms on average, which is faster than 52% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.