Daily Commuting on Two Wheels
Workaday Routes Through New York City

Published in Five Boro Bike Tour, May 2009

Just after the sun rises to the east of New York City, scores of the city’s bicycle riders strap on helmets, fill water bottles, pack work clothes, and ride to their jobs. Despite challenges—from meandering tourists on bike paths to reckless drivers—nearly all agree that biking is the most efficient and exhilarating way to commute.

Dr. Velocity’s West Side Cruise
“It feels great to be outside. It’s fresh, clean, bright—the opposite of the subway,” says Dr. Barry Schiffman, 62, who has been riding to work at Columbia University from the Gramercy Park area for six years. Schiffman has one of the most enviable routes in the city: after biking west from 17th Street and Third Avenue he zooms north on the West Side Greenway until 96th Street, where he continues on Riverside Drive for another mile and change, 40-50 minutes in all.

“It’s a beautiful way to travel,” raves Schiffman, who loves the Hudson River to his side, describes the 79th Street Boat Basin as an “impressionistic painting,” and is dazzled by the cherry blossoms in the spring. “But sometimes I loose my good sense and drift over to the aggressive side.” This spry, amiable research scientist concedes he can get annoyed by fellow bikers who occasionally try and race him, or at pedestrians who crisscross the bike path without looking, perhaps caught up in conversation, pushing baby carriages with unruly, longleashed dogs in tow. “I yell, ‘Yo!’ or ‘Hey!’ or ‘Watch out!’ and zip past them. I don’t want to get even with someone, but they do jump.”

Congested Squares from the East Village to Midtown Manhattan
Like most Manhattan commuters, Ashley Behrins, 25, is used to steering clear of double-parked trucks in bike lanes while dodging maniac drivers and pedestrians who shoot out in front of her without thinking. Such is the routine as she rides her red bike from the East Village to Hallmark Magazine’s Midtown office, taking a nice business outfit with her if she happens to have an important meeting slated for that day. She calls her morning ride a “healthier substitute for caffeine,” as she must navigate through some of downtown’s most congested squares on her ride up Sixth Avenue. At just 15 minutes, it’s the quickest way by far from Avenue C.

Vinyasa Town
Maja Sidebaeck, 34, lives in the East 30s and flows from one part of the city to another just as smoothly as she transitions into downward-facing dog when teaching Vinyasa yoga all over town. In one day, she might teach in four different locations, including Brooklyn, with spins of 20-50 minutes between stops.

“Going to Greenpoint is the most varied ride, and there is hardly any traffic,” says Sidebaeck, who rides a black folding bike. She’ll pedal south on Second Avenue, east on Houston Street, south on Suffolk Street, and across the Williamsburg Bridge. She continues north through Williamsburg to Greenpoint, adding, “since I’m wearing workout clothes already, it doesn’t matter about sweating too much.”

The Brooklyn Crusaders: Rebel Hill Avoider from Flatbush, Intrepid
Mom, and Manhattan’s Extra Tip

Many Brooklyn and Queens residents are thoroughly invigorated by riding over the East River bridges with spectacular views as part of their morning commute. However, the Brooklyn Bridge elicits vehement negative reviews because of the omnipresent, oblivious tourists meandering onto the bike lane.

“Unfortunately the Brooklyn Bridge is a nightmare almost every day of the year because there are tourists,” says Louie Fleck, 51, one of the most vocal anti-Brooklyn Bridge commuters. “I used to be very, very angry on the Brooklyn Bridge. I just couldn’t believe parents would let their toddler wonder around on the bridge—I think it’s criminal.” Clarifying that he’s never angry with children, who are excused by virtue of their youth, he notes, “it’s the people who can be aware and choose not to be.” The physically imposing Fleck used to yell expletives at people in the bike lane, until he had a revelation that most were foreigners on vacation, quite possibly forgetting that city residents were going about their daily lives. “So now, I have a warning with different strengths. I simply say ‘bike lane.’ If they continue to be stupid, I yell ‘bike lane!’”

The rest of the time, “I am like Christopher Columbus,” says Fleck, emphatically, “always searching for the flat path. I've even looked for a flatter path from Downtown Brooklyn to Flatbush.” His constant quest for the flattest route sometimes causes him to pay in length.

From Albemarle Terrace in Flatbush, he rides north on Ocean Avenue, veers onto Flatbush Avenue to enjoy the gorgeous, verdant stretch with Prospect Park to his left, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on the right, until Grand Army Plaza. Depending on whether Fleck is fulfilling his job as a musician, producer, media designer, or spin class instructor, he’ll take Flatbush to the Manhattan Bridge or the regrettably steeper Brooklyn Bridge and continue to TriBeCa or uptown.

Meanwhile, the intrepid Hilda Cohen, 38, rides from Fort Greene, Brooklyn, dropping off one of her kids at their nearby school (her husband takes the other child on his bike) en route. On the mini-stretch to school—down Dekalb Avenue, through the Fulton Street Mall, south on Hoyt Street to Pacific Street—Cohen gets an array of reactions. “Most people smile, they see how happy the kids are, but just the other day, some guy [in a car] ran a red light to tell me riding with a kid is unsafe.”

Once she’s on her own, Cohen backtracks to Smith Street, which turns into Jay Street, and continues into Manhattan over the Manhattan Bridge. She cuts across town to travel north on 10th Avenue or the West Side Greenway to get to her office on West 46th Street. Total commute: 30 minutes. As an architect/project manager, Cohen also rides to various work sites in the city.

“There are some magical moments,” reflects Cohen over her years of commuting. One winter’s day stands out: “I was biking on the Hudson, there was no one on the bike path for 10, 15 blocks. The sun was out, it was suddenly 45 degrees and the ice on the Hudson was cracking. It was so beautiful and over my shoulder I see the city, thinking of all the people rushing around, not knowing there was such beauty so close.”

Another Brooklynite who pedals into Manhattan, his beard’s two braids flapping in the wind, is musician and CUNY audio engineer instructor Chad Bernhard, 35. From his home on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg line, he bikes south through Williamsburg, over the Williamsburg Bridge and chooses to lengthen his ride by going south and around the southern tip of Manhattan, up the West Side Greenway to 42nd Street, then east to Seventh Avenue for a ride of about 45 minutes. Bernhard rides the extra bit for exercise, not because it’s more beautiful along the water. In fact, he prefers the engagement of city street riding.

“It’s fun, escaping death all the time.” Although Bernhard doesn’t get worked up over pesky pedestrians, he does get annoyed at the lack of bike racks in Midtown as his building has a strict no-bike policy. “I made this one speed,” he says of his beat-up green bike, “so it would look like crap and not get stolen,” as he never knows what he’ll have to chain his bike to.

Latin Exploration from Jackson Heights to Williamsburg
Although there are fewer commuters from Queens than Brooklyn, according to a 2007
Department of City Planning survey, certain bikers are not deterred. “I like seeing how the neighborhoods change,” says Claire Frisbie, 27, who moved to Jackson Heights, Queens, about a year ago and enjoys discovering different neighborhoods’ nooks and offerings. Frisbie is editor in chief at Remezcla.com, a website devoted to the city’s hipster Latin life, so she’s even done some impromptu reconnaissance during her half-hour-or-so commute to Williamsburg, including finding fantastic Latin eateries in Greenpoint.

“I like biking through parts of the city I wouldn’t see otherwise,” says Frisbie, who rides a rickety old three-speed. Her route follows bike lanes almost entirely, tracing a path from 34th Avenue to zig and zag through Woodside, Sunnyside, and Long Island City. She crosses under the Queensboro Bridge and over the Pulaski into Greenpoint and continues on to Williamsburg, including a stretch in one of the city’s newest bike lanes on Kent Street.

Astoria-Manhattan Express
Although he has a free Metrocard as part of his job working for MTA New York City Transit, Steve Scofield, 58, braves the elements by bike for his 45-minute-plus commute through Astoria, over the Pulaski Bridge, through Williamsburg, over the Williamsburg Bridge, and then south to Broadway’s beginning.

“I enjoy it, it’s exercise and if I want to be altruistic, I can say I’m freeing up a seat [on the subway] for a paying customer,” adding the only down side is not being able to read the newspaper. “I feel better when I ride. On the Pulaski, I see the same people and say hi, I wave at the same crossing guards along the way.”

Scofield, who needs to wear a business shirt and chinos for work, changes in his office. “I keep a pair of shoes, pants, shirts, rotating in and out of the office. My co-workers think I’m weird anyway, so this is just one more thing.”