Mid-May Saturday. Temperatures in the 60s, the East River doesn’t smell yet, and every greenway in the city is going to be busy. If you’re getting on a bike today — your own, a Citi Bike, a rental — here are three rides worth doing, plus the practical bits nobody tells you until you’re stranded with a dead battery on the West Side Highway.
1. Hudson River Greenway — The Classic, For Good Reason
The Hudson River Greenway runs 12.9 miles from Battery Park to the George Washington Bridge, mostly car-free, almost entirely flat, and with the kind of skyline-and-river views that justify every bike map’s reputation. It’s the most-used bike path in NYC — figure on roughly 7,000+ cyclists per day in peak season, per Bike New York — so don’t expect solitude on a Saturday afternoon.
Best time to ride it: Before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. on weekends. Midday Saturdays around 79th Street Boat Basin and Pier 84 get genuinely congested with families, joggers, and the e-bike delivery traffic that’s not technically supposed to be there.
Where to start: Pier 25 in Tribeca has Citi Bike racks, water, restrooms, and a clean entry onto the greenway. If you’re coming from Brooklyn, grab the path at Battery Park after the ferry terminals.
2. Manhattan Waterfront Greenway — The Full Loop
The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway completes a roughly 32-mile loop around the entire perimeter of Manhattan using the Hudson, Harlem, and East River paths. It’s not all separated — a few inland detours through East Harlem and the Lower East Side break up the riverside flow — but it’s the closest thing NYC has to a touring route inside the city.
The honest version: Plan 3-4 hours including stops. The East River side from the United Nations down to the Brooklyn Bridge is rougher pavement and tighter than the Hudson side. The northern stretch through Inwood Hill Park is genuinely beautiful and almost empty on weekend mornings. Bring water — there are gaps of 3+ miles between fountains in the Bronx-adjacent sections.
3. Prospect Park Loop — When You Don’t Want a Project
If the idea of 13 miles of riverfront feels like a job, the Prospect Park Loop is 3.35 miles, fully car-free, gently rolling, and noticeably less crowded than Central Park. It’s the right move when you want a real ride but you’re also planning to be somewhere else by lunch.
The loop runs counterclockwise. There’s a long downhill on East Drive that’s fun on a road bike and a little hairy on a Citi Bike — don’t grip the brakes the whole way down, let the bike roll. Park entries from Grand Army Plaza or Bartel-Pritchard Square both put you on the loop within a block.
Citi Bike Notes for Today
If you’re riding a Citi Bike e-bike, the new fare structure that started in January is still in effect — members pay per-minute fees that add up fast on long greenway rides. If your ride is going to be over an hour, the day pass or a Lyft Pink membership often comes out cheaper than per-minute e-bike charges. Check the Citi Bike app before you start.
The recent 48-station East New York expansion means Brooklyn riders heading to the Eastern Parkway / Brownsville areas now have dependable docking. If your phone says “no docks available” at one station — and you’ll see that today, on a Saturday, at every popular waterfront station — the app’s dock-finder will route you to the next-closest one. The five-minute extension to find a dock is automatic. Use it.
E-Scooter and E-Bike Rules — Quick Refresher
E-bikes are allowed on the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. Stand-up e-scooters are not permitted on most NYC park paths, including the Hudson Greenway sections that run through Riverside Park and Hudson River Park. The line is fuzzy and rarely enforced, but if you’re on a scooter and a Parks Department officer is having a bad day, you can be ticketed. Worth knowing.
If You’re New to NYC Riding
The official NYC Bike Map from the Department of Transportation (nyc.gov/bikemap) shows protected lanes, conventional lanes, shared lanes, and greenways color-coded by infrastructure type. It’s also available as a free print map at most Citi Bike stations and DOT offices. Use it. Ride.io and Strava are fine for tracking, but the official map is the only one that’s accurate on which lanes are actually protected versus just painted.
Have a good ride.
