This morning I decided to see what my new bicycle commute, most of it anyway, is gonna be like after *E* and I move. Instead of heading north from my house, as I usually do, to Queens and taking the Queensborough Bridge to Manhattan, I biked south to the Williamsburg Bridge. The bridge is about 4 miles northeast from our new home and from there it’s another 7 miles to work so I got to see the majority of the new route.

I gotta say I’m liking the W’burg Bridge a lot better than the Queensborough. The walk/bike path on the W’burg is above the traffic lanes unlike the QB where you’re right next to them consequently the air on the W’burg path is much, much better. Also there’s no construction going on with its attendant workers and their trucks blocking the path. I didn’t miss those guys at all.

So far, it’s plus plus for the W’burg but I saved the best plus for last. It takes me half as long to get across it as the QB, just five minutes this morning. I’m not sure why. It could be that it’s shorter than the QB or maybe it’s the angle of ramps for the paths. Either way I sailed across it this morning and there’s nothing wrong with that.

An experienced cyclist that I work with suggested taking First Ave to go uptown after getting off the bridge so I took his advice. It was not for naught as it turned out to be pretty ideal. Traffic in general on First wasn’t too heavy and there weren’t any seriously congested intersections which is always a possibility when you get around midtown. Also it’s kinda cool because it takes me past the United Nations building.

I stayed on First until I passed under the QB Bridge then took my usual route on into work. Total time this morning was about 40 minutes, just 10 more than normal. I expect the whole new commute to take about 50-60 minutes but I won’t know for sure until I’ve tried it. All in all, although it’ll be twice as long, I think my new commute is going to be an improvement over my old one and I can finally leave the wretched QB Bridge to the smog and construction workers.

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