thehammerdog

Took a great ride over the weekend I normally go from Fort Lee to GWB down riverside dr to the park but today I went down riverside dr to the path down by the river to south street area under the bridge up and back the east side total of 30 miles......Felt great and my first time so south. The riding was good for most of the ride but by the UN building it gets slow and not so much fun. Took 71 back to park and back to GWB.
Cold and windy and kinda suxed after 3 hrs of riding .

Nadini

Nice ride, next time you'll make it to Brooklyn!

The cold wind has been bothering me for a while, especially by the river. Not so fun.

zacster

The east side isn't anywhere near as nice as the west side for biking.

UniChris

Above the twenties, I'd agree, above 37th there isn't even a path that goes anywhere. And then the northern sections after the gap have various construction issues.

Below there is kind of nice though; literally a single traffic light in the whole stretch vs. the constant ones on the west, and not too crowded. And if you want to ride slower you can get out by the water in East River park, unlike on the west where the bike/walk segregation is mandated. But the plan is to close east river park for several years, bulldoze everything and mound fill on it to raise it above flood level, then start over.

That said I usually do the lower east piece to get to/from the west - east 37th looping down and up to the lighthouse and back is 50km.

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.

UniChris

Yeah that part stinks. Literally once it gets warm.

wilfried

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.

UniChris

It will be pathetically funny if the UN bypass opens before East River Park is re-opened.

I was reading some stuff recently about soil-filled wire baskets being planned in the sections under the FDR, renderings made it look like that would turn the path into an unpleasantly narrow chute without a lot of passing room

One step forward, two steps back...

I find myself riding less and less in the city, and more and more outside of it. Hoping the Maybrook gets built, the Old Put paving goes through this fall, and the North County Trailway work turns out nicer than the current patch job; if that all comes together in the coming years Van Cortlandt to New Paltz and back to Poughkeepsie for the train home will be a century route that feels worth doing.

wilfried

I live on the Lower East Side, so I use this stretch quite a bit, as a pleasant detour when coming from Chinatown or the Manhattan Bridge. The riding isn't great, wot with weird zigzags and crappy pavement, but the scenery is nice, and it's off street. The intermittent suckiness that is the stretch from the South Street Seaport to the park, which has been getting better in fits and starts, is now going become permanently sucky? And will terminate at an impassable pile of dirt, quite possibly until I die? What's the bloody point of even trying?