Originally Posted by
zacster
My office is on the east side on 42nd St so I do ride the east side often. It just isn't as nice as the west side. I particularly dislike the part between 23rd St and 37th, with the buses, the exit from the FDR, the parking lot for the Water Club, the heliport, the ferry, and lastly the tunnel under the FDR to come out on the street. It is a total mess for cycling. I tend to just take 1st/2nd because of it. Oh, the Con Ed plant where the path narrows to about half the width of a human being isn't great either, nor the short section between Basketball City and the start of the East River park. I almost always ride on the waterfront path too since it isn't crowded.
This is my daily commute. Not seamless, but I find it rather pleasant. Better than riding the streets. 1st Ave. would be more direct, but I'd rather take Ave. C to the East River path, up to 34th St.
And I just learned, don't know how I was so out of the loop, they now plan to bury all of East River Park under 10 feet of landfill, as part of the grand climate change storm mitigation plan. Which they say will take three and half years. My ass; of they say three and half years, it'll take the better part of a decade. So a big chunk of the East Side greenway will disappear under dirt, until they rebuild the park from scratch. And, to add insult to injury, part of the reason for this plan, rather the one they had been planning for four years involving berms, is to avoid disrupting the FDR. And they only finished the current park in 2010.