NYC Parks Department Opens 40 Miles of New Protected Bike Infrastructure

NEW YORK — The New York City Parks Department formally opened 40 miles of new protected bicycle infrastructure on Monday, completing a capital project that began in 2023 and connects previously isolated greenway segments in all five boroughs while introducing significant new protected lane mileage in the Bronx — a borough that advocates have long identified as the most underserved in the city's cycling network. The opening ceremony, held at a new greenway entrance near the Harlem River in the South Bronx, was attended by the parks commissioner, several city council members, and a large contingent of cyclists who rode a portion of the new routes.

The centerpiece of the expansion is a 9-mile greenway segment along the Harlem and Bronx Rivers that connects Port Morris in the south to Soundview Park in the north, filling a critical gap in the borough's cycling network that advocates have pressed the city to address since the Bloomberg administration. The new segment is fully protected — separated from vehicle traffic by concrete barriers, not just painted lines — and includes amenities that previous Bronx greenway sections lacked: weather shelters, secure bike parking, water fountains, and wayfinding signage in English and Spanish.

The remaining mileage is distributed across the other boroughs, with significant additions in northern Manhattan, southeastern Queens, and southern Brooklyn. A new protected lane on a major commercial corridor in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn is particularly notable, as it required the conversion of two traffic lanes and the relocation of a bus stop — a politically contentious process that took 14 months of community engagement. Transportation advocates said the Sunset Park project demonstrated that difficult streets can be redesigned for cycling if the planning process is genuinely responsive to community concerns rather than treating them as obstacles.

Cycling counts and survey data from the Department of Transportation show that ridership on existing protected infrastructure has grown substantially in recent years. Counts at dedicated monitoring points on the Hudson River Greenway and the Brooklyn Bridge approach show daily ridership increases of 18 to 24 percent between 2023 and 2025. Surveys conducted by the advocacy organization Transportation Alternatives indicate that a majority of New Yorkers who do not currently cycle would consider doing so if the routes they needed were protected from traffic — a finding that transportation planners say is consistent with the experience of every city that has built high-quality protected infrastructure.

The expansion has not been without opposition. Merchant associations on several streets that lost parking spaces for protected lanes have protested the changes, and some community boards in Queens submitted formal objections during the planning process citing concerns about traffic rerouting. City transportation officials conducted before-and-after studies on streets where similar trade-offs were made in earlier projects and presented findings showing that protected lanes typically have minimal effect on adjacent business revenues while improving pedestrian safety and active transportation rates — findings that some opponents accepted and others disputed.

For commuters, particularly in the Bronx, the new infrastructure represents a meaningful change in their daily options. Yolanda Torres, 28, who works at a hospital in the South Bronx and lives in Soundview, said she has been waiting for the river greenway connection for two years. "I used to ride on the street and it felt dangerous the whole time," she said. "Now I have a protected path the whole way to work. It changes how I feel about getting on the bike." She estimated that the protected route will save her 15 minutes compared with the bus on days when she can cycle, and $3.80 in subway fare.

The Parks Department says it will open an additional 22 miles of protected cycling infrastructure before the end of 2026, including a long-awaited extension of the Staten Island Greenbelt trail network and connections between existing Queens greenway segments near Flushing Meadows and Jamaica Bay. Advocates say the cumulative expansion, if completed on schedule, will push the city's total protected cycling network above 350 miles for the first time — a milestone they have been targeting since the Vision Zero initiative set it as a long-range goal.