New York City – Day 3

I started the day with breakfast in the room consisting of the raspberries that I bought on the street yesterday, oatmeal from the hotel shop, and tea made with the kettle and tea bags provided by the front desk.

I decided that I would walk down 42nd St. past Bryant Park, to Broadway, explore Times Square, continue walking through Hell’s Kitchen to the Hudson River to ride on the Hudson river Greenway to the Cloisters at the north end of the island.

I passed this wonderful building just before I got to Broadway.

Then I started seeing signs that Times Square was near. It can be such a busy place that they have a sign telling pedestrians to keep moving.

The last time I was in Times Square most of the space was taken up by roadway and parked cars. A few years ago under Michael Bloomsburg the city transformed a lot of the car oriented space into bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and patios.

The Transportation Commissioner Jennette Sadek Kahn, who worked for Bloomberg, knew that there would be a lot of backlash generated by removing space for cars. People tend to try to protect the status quo. Times Square was the first space they tackled. They decided that the key would be to transform the place quickly and cheaply, on a temporary basis, so that people could see what the new space actually looked like and felt like, and didn’t have to imagine it. They started on a Friday evening and used cheap plastic tables and chairs and straw bales to mark out the patios. It was well enough received that they were able to invest more in the space, and when a mayoral candidate a few years later suggested that he would turn the space back over to cars, people protected the new status quo, and he lost the election.

Times Square is an almost overwhelming space. Massive screens constantly changing. Music, Disney characters, crowds, people taking pictures, shopping, eating, drinking, resting, people watching.

After exploring Times Square I continued walking through Hell‘s kitchen. Some of the Marvel movies and shows are set in Hell’s Kitchen, but I didn’t see any superheroes. It did have a very different feel from Times Square with lots of rundown scenes, but also bike lanes, a bike share station, a Porsche dealership, and the cruise ship docks.

Real estate was obviously expensive enough to make it worthwhile to have some of these stacked car parking lots.

Today I decided to purchase a 24 hour bike share pass for $15. It provided me with unlimited included 30 minute rides. As there are extra charges for going over 30 minutes I had to keep an eye on the clock and regularly dock the bike to end the ride, and then immediately take it out again to start the clock over.

The Hudson River Greenway was a completely separated multiuse path that mostly followed the river and was often under 12th Avenue and the Henry Hudson Parkway. The highway was generally high enough that the space underneath was still light and airy, and it would actually be beneficial when it was raining.

I saw a couple things that I was familiar with from peoples’ pictures on social media and had that I had hoped to see.

I had expected to find bike share stations along the Greenway but they were actually located on the other side of the highway and generally required a climb up from the river’s edge over a bridge above the highway each time I needed to dock and then take the bike out again.

I had needed an bathroom since Times Square and the first one I came across on the Greenway was locked, but I finally came to one that was open, but had no bike share station so I took the bike right into the bathroom with me asi was not willing to risk having it stolen and having to pay $1200 to replace it.

Unlike in Toronto, they seem to be able to have heated indoor park bathrooms that stay open year round.

The process of undocking and docking a bike was very simple. I opened the app on my phone pressed the scan button, which opened my camera, scanned the QR code on the top of the stem, and the dock would unlock. When returning it one rolls it into that stand quite hard – it helps to pick up the seat of the bike as you roll it and drop it. As soon as it relocked the bike I would get a notification on my phone that it had been returned. Once when I didn’t push it in hard enough I got a notification that it might not be locked properly.

The third time I docked the bike I was getting quite hungry and hot so I took off a layer and ate some of the pistachios I had with me. At that point I determined it was only about 10 minutes further to the Cloisters.

As I was cycling downhill next to the highway I saw a highway exit sign for the Cloisters on the other side of a jersey barrier. I stopped and pulled out Google maps to see how I would get to the Cloisters, which I could see at that point at the top of the hill, to find out it was a very convoluted route, up a very steep hill.

At the same time I noted a restaurant and a bike station just ahead so I docked the bike and walked over to the restaurant, which unfortunately, turned out to be closed.

I grabbed the bike again, rode a few minutes further on, and found an area – Dyckman – with a lot of restaurants and a bike share station, right next to a subway station. I docked the bike and got lunch.

I decided to walk up to the cloisters which entailed climbing about 150 stairs, rather than riding. It was already mid afternoon so I just walked around the building and didn’t pay the $24 admission to go in.

Just before heading back down I spoke to a cyclist that was resting, who was riding a road bike, and asked for advice about riding back south towards Central Park. I wanted to take a different, less isolated route. I followed his advice and it was a good.

I started riding on Dyckman, the first busy street riding for me in New York City, which had had no bike lane for the first few blocks. Just before I got to the bike lane, as I started up from the light, the car behind me honked long and close passed me. It was the only slightly bad experience I had on the road.

I rode along the Bronx River path, and found a docking station where I could restart my ride at the corner where I needed to turn off the path.

After that I was on the road again. There was a bike lane, but there were a lot of cars parked on it. But the traffic wasn’t moving too quickly, and it wasn’t too heavy, and so I felt comfortable riding and passing the cars in the bike lane.

I passed a classic New York brownstone just before I got to Central Park.

Most of the roads in Central Park are closed to cars. There’s a lane for pedestrians, the centre lane for slow cyclist, and the right side for fast cyclists.

After going about halfway through the park I left to get coffee.

From there the quickest way back to the hotel with straight up Park Avenue. I expect a bike lane, but when I got there found there was none. The road is four lanes in each direction with a Centre Boulevard. The curb lane is used for parking. There were often cars double parked in the second lane from the right, usually a black Lincoln navigator. But traffic was heavy, and cars weren’t moving quickly. The streets cross very regularly. I had to ride about 40 blocks, and was generally moving faster than the cars. They’re often back up at the lights, with no cars crossing from the side streets so I would filter to the front of the cars and jump the red light to stay in front of them. It was fun riding like a boss, or a New York City food delivery cyclist. I felt completely confident and safe and had a blast. I rode right by where Michael is working, but he wasn’t quite ready so I continued on to the docking station close to the hotel, and then walked the rest of the way back. I ride 32km in total. With the docking every 30 minutes, picture taking, and heavy three speed bike, as well as more hills than I expected, it took a long time.

Once Michael returned we decided on Vietnamese for dinner and walked to get it and brought it back to the hotel to eat.

It was another wonderful day and I’m looking forward to using the last few hours of the 24 hour pass to get to the High Line in the morning and then walking that, and visiting New York’s newest park, Little Park, and the Vessel at Hudson Yards.


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