The Bronx Rides

To skip The Bronx love and get to the rides, scroll down.

The only borough attached to the United States mainland*, The Bronx, to an outsider coming from Manhattan on a bicycle, feels like a giant transition zone to the world beyond the city. It’s a simplistic assessment, as Bronx County, with a population of almost 1.4 million, would be the seventh-most populous city in the United States, and a diverse metropolis just about anywhere else. The southern end is urban and industrial, and the parks and streets become ever more verdant as you travel north. It is for this reason that we did most of our rides at the far edges of the borough.  It took a little exploring, but eventually I found the best Bronx bike rides.

Word has it that The Bronx is the hilliest borough. I’ve found little proof of this, and only two of the rides, Wave Hill and Yankee Stadium, seemed hilly from the saddle. As with the other boroughs, the natural resistance you’ll feel most on the rides here will probably be wind when you’re riding along the water.

Many of The Bronx rides overlap, so if you’re at all adventurous or seeking more miles, it is easy to combine rides or join them by taking an on-street bike path. Most of the rides either ring or go through parks, so if you’re looking for bucolic respite, you’ll find no shortage of places to pull over for recreation and relaxation.

The State of Road Affairs

Currently, there are plenty of bike lanes running on the north-south avenues, so getting to the northern edge of the borough and the routes we’ve mapped is fairly easy if you’re coming from Queens or Manhattan. At the same time, there are not many lanes running east-west. We’re hoping that these start to appear and that more bike lanes appear in the South Bronx. The southern tip seems to have riding potential, as the industrial areas are generally fairly quiet much of the time. And when the new human-power-centric bridge linking The Bronx to Randall’s Island is built, we’ll realize lots of new places to ride and encourage you to do some exploration in this area as well.

The Bronx Rides can be downloaded (The Best Bronx Bike Rides)

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If you want to select particular rides, they’re here: