Check it out.

This clip follows me through Upper Manhattan from Dyckman (~200 Street) and Broadway down to 110th Street and Broadway when the streets were closed to cars.

The Summer Streets program shuts private cars out of Broadway and blocks most cross traffic. It is pretty amazing.

Internet tell me-- would the volume of people (by foot and bike) using the street in this clip yield a traffic jam if they were all in single passenger cars? (My gut says yes.)

Anyhow-- enjoy.

I am just wishing that summer streets was a few hours every mild weekend March-November.

😃
@atthenius@fediscience.org
@atthenius@bsky.social

And there are some low-hanging fruit to improve access to it.

This short clip shows how easily this Hudson River Greenway could be connected to the mezzanine of Riverside Park in Morningside Heights (~Upper West Side near Columbia University, Manhattan, NYC near Broadway and 125) by simply changing a single double-wide, under-utilized exit ramp of the adjacent Car Road - Henry Hudson Parkway.

Exit 12N of the Henry Hudson Parkway could be a bike lane for the cost of a few concrete barricades. It would harden bike access by providing for a parallel path.

And it wouldn't even inspire ire w car drivers since no cars would lose parking or even be made to wait at a stoplight.

This 30 minute Citibike ride was $7.84 in September 2024.

Citibike cost for this 32 minute ride was $8.36

The trail whose name switches from 'Old Putnam Trail' to 'South County Trail' at the boundary of The Bronx and Yonkers, winds parallel to the I-87 interstate and Saw Mill River Parkways, but mostly has enough buffer of a forest so that these roads are not visible. There are nearly no road crossings. One of the best rides out of NYC and suitable for kids. This trail is extremely easy to access in NYC beginning near the Bronx terminus of the 1-train.

This trip is little before peak fall foliage (but in a dry year, which means less vivid colors than typical). This clip turns around in Ardsley, after ~12 miles, where engineers are removing a dam from the Saw Mill River.

I skipped the longer-leg to Orchard Beach -- a true NYC gem with white sand, sailboat, fried food and real New Yorkers chilling last weekend.

So here you have it.

Enjoy cycling the vibrant and historical streets of The Bronx -- the northernmost borough of New York City. The Bronx is home to the largest park in NYC -- Pelham Park. And a myriad of other water front greenways.

Check out the safe bike lanes along the Champs-Elysees of the Bronx, the Grand Concourse. After party at the New York Botanical Gardens before looping back into Upper Manhattan.

NB The music credit text at the beginning and end of video.

We start on Seaman Avenue and hop on the Hudson River Greenway near the Tubbyhook / Dyckman Marina near the Hudson River and then travel on car-free paths between the lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway through Washington Heights and Hudson Heights neighborhoods. A few steep switchbacks near the George Washington Bridge and we find ourselves passing the Little Red Lighthouse and continuing south along the Hudson River Greenway. The waterway seen on the right side of the camera is the Hudson River -- a brackish, tidal expanse nearly a mile wide. Eventually, we climb back up into Manhattan in the Morningside Heights neighborhood and travel south along Claremont and then Broadway until cut-scene familiar (for Seinfeld fans) to NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies above Tom's Restaurant in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

Yes -- this is actually Manhattan. It is this beautiful.