Next stop: 34th Street-Hudson River Greenway

I rode the 7 train to the new 34th Street stop for the first time today. Too late? Well, I figured you all had the opening covered. I want to talk about the new connections that this station makes possible. The Times has mentioned that it's right across the street from the High Line, but I'm one of the few who have pointed out that the massive Megabus stop complex is right there too, and BoltBus is a block away. But also across the street is a Citibike dock, and a block away is the Hudson River Greenway.

This makes 34th Street-Hudson Yards the closest subway station to the river in Midtown. Only a handful of other stations come that close: Bowling Green and World Trade Center downtown, 79th and 96th on the Upper West Side, 145th in Harlem, 157th in Washington Heights, and Dyckman Street in Inwood. None of the ones above 79th currently have Citibike docks.

Thanks to the new station, a Citibike transfer to the Hudson River Greenway is now available. I've done similar connections before, but mostly the other way: riding a Citibike up the Eighth Avenue bike lane to 40th Street. Even then, that one long block on unprotected Midtown streets ends the bike ride on a sour note.

I once tried going the other way, riding a Citibike from Times Square across 41st Street to Ninth Avenue, but those two blocks were worse than one, and the abuse of the bike lane at the back of the Farley Post Office was depressing. I've ridden all the way across 42nd from Times Square to the Hudson River Greenway, once in each direction, and neither is an experience I want to repeat.

So today I took the 7 to 34th Street, rode the slow-ass funicular to the surface, hopped on a Citibike and only had to deal with one, relatively low-traffic, block of 34th Street. Then I was flying south on the Greenway, mostly protected from cars for a nice long way.

I really had only one worry: when I pulled up the Spotcycle app, it only showed me one free bike at the station. There was a second bike, but it was unavailable. I'm glad nobody took that bike before I got to it. I hope Citibike adds more docks or schedules it for more rebalancing, because it looks pretty popular.