Metabelian distributions and sub-Riemannian geodesics

We begin by characterizing metabelian distributions in terms of principal bundle structures. Then, we prove that in sub-Riemannian manifolds with metabelian distributions of rank r, the projection of strictly singular trajectories to some r-dimensional manifold must remain within an analytic variety. As a consequence, for rank-2 metabelian distributions, geodesics are of class C¹.