FAYETTEVILLE — Construction is set to begin in March on the newest link in the city trail system.

The Town Branch Trail will stretch 2.8 miles from Razorback Road to City Lake Road south of 15th Street.

“It’s a really important east-west connection in the southern part of the city,” Matt Mihalevich, trails coordinator, said.

The trail is planned in phases.

The first, half-mile segment will run from South School Avenue to Greathouse Park, north of the Arkansas Research and Technology Park.

Later phases include a tie-in to a 0.4-mile stub built in 2007 by Crowne Apartments developers. An eastern section will connect to the 0.8-mile St. Paul Trail, which runs along an old rail line from City Lake Road to Armstrong Avenue. The trail likely will tie into the path around Walker Park through a tunnel under 15th Street.

Eighty percent of the $780,000 construction project is being paid for with federal money from the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission and Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. The city’s share is about $157,000.

The University of Arkansas board donated land north of the Research and Technology Park to the city for the trail.

“This was our intentional plan all along: to connect the Research and Technology Park to the city’s master plan for trails,” Phil Stafford, president of the University of Arkansas Technology Development Foundation, said. “We’re just delighted to be a part of it.”

City Council members are expected to award a construction contract to Springdale-based Arco Excavation & Paving on Feb. 4.

Mihalevich said he expects construction to be finished by the end of the year.

Other projects to wrap in 2014 include a half-mile extension of the Frisco Trail from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Walker Park; the 1.8 mile Tsa La Gi Trail connecting the Frisco Trail to Hollywood Avenue south of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; the 3 mile Clear Creek Trail from Lake Fayetteville north of the Northwest Arkansas Mall to where Scull Creek and Mud Creek trails converge; and a roughly 0.4 mile link taking pedestrians off Lake Fayetteville Road.

“We’re really going to get a lot of trail opened,” Mihalevich said.