Ever wanted to take in the whole Brooklyn waterfront by bike? The epic return of the Greenway Ride for 2020 on May 31st will enable you to do just that. It’s a 26-mile ride that will give you a full tour of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, a nearly two-decade ambition of Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI), a nonprofit organization founded in 2004 whose mission is to develop, establish, and steward the Greenway. BGI hopes to have the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway fully completed by the end of 2021.
Photos courtesy Brooklyn Greenway Initiative
The 2020 Greenway Ride will start in Greenpoint near Greenpoint Playground and end at a Finisher Festival in the new Shirley Chisholm State Park, which opened last year. Ride through diverse neighborhoods like Wallabout, Red Hook, Sunset Park, and Bay Ridge, and through well-known and lesser known city, state and national parks including Brooklyn Bridge Park, Bush Terminal Piers Park, Erie Basin Park, Owl’s Head Park, Plumb Beach, and Shore Parkway. All along the way, you’ll see a striking range of landscapes from the Manhattan skyline to the wetlands of Jamaica Bay, along with some of mankind’s engineering achievements like the East River bridges and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
The Greenway Ride will also highlight the gaps in connectivity that BGI is currently focused on pushing New York City to complete, including segments in Vinegar Hill, DUMBO, Red Hook, and a long stretch in southern Brooklyn between Gravend at Coney Island Creek and Sheepshead Bay at Plumb Beach. Terri Carta, the Executive Director of BGI tells Untapped New York, “BGI’s goal/purpose for the ride are to raise awareness of the Greenway and what it provides to all Brooklynites, and to activate the Greenway as both a recreational trail and viable commuter route along the waterfront — and to show / connect people/participants to the lesser-known parks along Brooklyn’s waterfront.”
The last iteration of the Greenway Ride took place in 2018 and ended at Riis Beach, but the new finish line at Shirley Chisholm State Park will enable the ride to better highlight the completed portions of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway and the incredible new park on the shores of Jamaica Bay. The Finisher Festival will feature
Registration for the 2020 Greenway costs $66 until April 30, 2020, after which the price increases to $77 and then to $80 on the day of the ride. You can use any human-powered bicycle or pedal-assist bicycle as defined in the Rules of the City of New York, Chapter 4, Title 34. Get more information and register for the 2020 Greenway Ride here.
