Rail Trail & TZB Sept. 15

Brownski

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 19, 2020
Trying to mix things up a little lately so I threw a bike in my car last Sunday instead of a kayak. I parked in a little park in Sparkill by the Joseph B. Clark Rail Trail.

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I got off the paved path almost right away and followed another bike trail whose name I forget. It is dirt or gravel and goes through the woods north through Piermont and lower Nyack. It goes under 9W here.

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There’s a little museum at one of the road crossings

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After a little while, you start to get glimpses of the river to the east

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And before you know it, you come to a bridge over the Thruway. On the other side you can get on the Tappan Zee Bridge foot/ bike path, take some stairs down into Nyack or follow the path further north. I hadn’t done the bridge this year so I went that way.

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If we’re being honest, the bridge path is really inadequate. It is not wide enough for two way bike traffic right next to two way foot traffic. These guys are on the wrong side of the line for instance. I did my best to keep my tires on the edge of the shadow, which kept my handlebars in my quarter of the path.

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There are a couple rest stops on the way over. Each one has a specific name and a plaque explaining something about what the name means.

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I was on my son’s bike. It’s a little small but I like the shifters better than my own and I put road tires on it earlier this summer for our beach trip so it was perfect for this ride.

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It’s awesome that the path was included in the new bridge design but it needs to be wider. They should eliminate the northbound bus lane and double the path’s width. There is no bus lane on the Thruway either north or south of the bridge so it’s not even giving the commuter buses that much of an advantage over the rest of us.

The Westchester side

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There are bathrooms, vending machines and chairs as well as parking. And tons of additional historical reading

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I headed back


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It was fun. I got a decent workout.

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