West Side Bike Path

Gym? Who needs a gym when you have a bike and a 10 mile bike path up the Hudson River? While i worked down on Murray st., i used to ride daily along the path from Chambers St. and as far up as the George Washington Bridge and back. It is a nice flat ride (with the wind it doesn't always seem so).

Yesterday i traveled to upper Manhattan and tried to check out some of the lesser known entrances to the waterfront and the bike path. I found some very rugged bikeways, rusty-fenced pedestrian walkways, sketchy tunnels, abandoned train tracks and a few dead-ends. From the Westside highway you can see all the rock walls and tall staircases down from Riverside...i walked down that too. I visited the GW bridge and the little red lighthouse then slowly, with many stops along the way, rode all the way back down to the battery.

This bike path, interrupted only once at 125th st., has gone under a monumental change since 4 years ago, which was the last time I rode the entire length of the path. But how exactly has it changed?

For a city completely surrounded by water, the waterfront in Manhattan, especially on the Hudson river has rarely been seen as a focus of the city. I never understood why most of the city wasn't planned from the water in. In most places, the most expensive properties are on the water. Maybe the view of New Jersey was just that unappealing?

For most of NYC history, the area along the Hudson River has been a bit of a wasteland. From neighborhood garbage dump to railroad coal deposits, there wasn't much natural beauty left. Add some good old fashioned Robert Moses urban development and there might as well not even be a waterfront.

Over the last 25 years, all that has changed. Neighborhood alliances, community groups and environmental organizations have all had a hand in forcing the city to finally embrace the waterfront and give it to the public. I suppose its my cynical nature, but i am very surprised that the entire waterfront hasn't been given to large real-estate developers to build uber-expensive high rise apartments. Some deals have been made, to the Donald Trumps of the city, but with the caveat that the buildings aren't actually on the waterfront and they have to help in building up the Hudson River greenway.

Riding on the path yesterday, i see what they have done. Some of it is exactly what you would expect. Riverside cafes with overpriced fruity drinks, and some family friendly entertainment like batting cages and a trapeze school. And i do question any of the newly built public piers on their environmental impact on the river. But a large amount of the path was a straight clean-up job and finding creative ways to utilize unique space under and next to the highway. There are great viewing areas hidden from the highways by newly planted trees and even the highly priced cafe allowed me to sit at the nicely shaded veranda tables without having to buy anything.

I'd say that having the Hudson riverfront as an almost 100% public space is one of the best city planning coups in our history. I think its great. The most northern section of the path is still a common community gathering point for weekend barbecues and open field soccer matches. I hope that it is not touched anymore than patching some of the bike path that is crumbling a bit.

Really, many of the urban planning decisions in New York have been money driven, poorly planned, with outright discrimination or without consideration for the environment or the public. But I think they finally got one right.