Getting in and out of Philly by bicycle
If you are touring and plan to stop in
Philly then this page will give you some possible routes. Most start or
end at the Art Museum, which is at the end of The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, in
Center City. To cycle to or from PHL airport, take a
look here.
I'm still working on this page. E-mail me if you have questions about a
particular route I haven't covered or completed yet. Also,
e-mail
me if you would like Garmin GPS routes or tracks of these routes.
North
New Hope. New Hope
was once a quaint artist's village but is now a tourist trap on the Delaware River to
the North of Philadelphia. It's a common place to cross between
Pennsylvania and Lambertville, New Jersey (Philly-New Hope cue)(New
Hope-Philly cue) and a natural place to stop on trips between Philly and New
York.
New York (from New Hope). This is
a route that takes quiet roads all the way from New Hope to Newark, and does the
best it can from there to get to the Hoboken ferry to cross to Manhattan. Use this cue
sheet with the New Hope cue sheet to make the whole 125-mile Philly-NY trip (New
Hope-Manhattan cue). There is a different route, and one in the
other direction available here.
Pennsylvania Bike Route L.
The State of Pennsylvania has marked several touring corridors for bicyclists.
You can read about them on the
PennDot web site. To get from Route L to Center City, one possibility is to take
Route L to Warwick (W of Philly) and then go East on
PA Bike Route S (see below). There are also many roads that parallel Rt 73 between Boyertown and Philly that are very pleasant. Rt 73 itself is
ridable (it has a shoulder along much of its length) but unpleasant. It can be busy, particularly close to Philly.
Adventure Cycling
Atlantic Coast Route. If you are
traveling from Philly to the North or coming from the North to Philly, you will
cross the Delaware at New Hope and can use these cue sheets
(Philly-New Hope cue)(New
Hope-Philly cue). If you are traveling from Philly South, follow the
directions under West, below.
Some other routes for traveling to and from the North of Philadelphia are provided in Daniel Convissor's Bike Route Database for New Jersey.
East
To the East of Philadelphia is New
Jersey, including Atlantic City, Cape May and The Shore.
There must be good bike routes to these places but I haven't tried them.
The cue sheets page includes three
Philly-to-the-shore rides.
Crossing the Delaware.
Cycling between Philadelphia and New Jersey requires crossing the Delaware
River. The only bike-friendly bridge in central Philadelphia is the
Ben Franklin Bridge, which has shared
pedestrian/bikeways. Usually, the South bikeway is open but during
(frequent) repairs this is changed to the North side. Bicycle access is
prohibited after 7 pm (6 pm in the winter).
Bicycles cannot cross the river anywhere to the South
East of Philadelphia. The only option is to try to hitch-hike across the
Walt Whitman or Commodore Barry bridges. This is not recommended.
There is a bike-friendly
ferry at the
mouth of the Delaware river from Lewes (Delaware) to Cape May at the
Southern-most tip of New Jersey. There may also be a two-ferry trip using
the Three Forts Ferries from
Fort Mott in New Jersey, but check ahead to be sure that the boats you plan to
take allow bikes.
In
North Philadelphia, the Tacony-Palmyra bridge can be walked across by
bicyclists. The Betsy-Ross bridge cannot. North of the city, there are bridges where bikes
can be walked across in Bristol-Burlington, Morrisville-Trenton, Yardley, Washington's Crossing, New Hope-Lambertville, Uhlerstown-Frenchtown,
and Milford. There's
also a footbridge from close to the
bottom of Fleecydale Rd in Lumberville to Bulls Island which is very
popular with bicyclists.
South
Wilmington
and the Delmarva peninsula.
This route travels from
Philly through the main line to Chadds Ford, and then along the scenic but busy
PA Rte 100 to the capital of Delaware. From the center of Wilmington, take Rte 9
out to the Delmarva peninsula. The first 10 miles is not pretty, but it
does the trick.
Baltimore and Washington.
The Adventure Cycling Atlantic Coast Route connects to these cities (see
below).
There is also a meticulously documented series of cue sheets from the Philly
suburb of
Media to DC written by Erik Cheever.
Pennsylvania
Bike Route L. Has anybody ridden it South of
Philly? The section over Blue Mountain is dirt and not recommended for
road bikes. Take Hawk Mountain or Gun Club Rd/Rte 309 instead.
Adventure Cycling
Atlantic Coast Route.
There
is an
on-line cue sheet for the DC to Philly portion of this route. From
Philadelphia, the Atlantic Coast Route first travels North West and then West to
circle
Lancaster before traveling South to go either through or to the West of Baltimore and
through Washington DC. My advice is to connect to the route in Norristown (see
West, below) by traveling North West from the Center of Philly, along the
pond-flat Schuylkill Valley River trail. Even though this starts in the wrong direction, it
saves getting lost on potentially busy roads and will probably end up being
faster. If you want to save the extra 35 miles by cycling
directly from the Susquehanna River (Conowingo Dam) along back roads of the Main
Line to Central Philly, here is a cue (From
ACAC route S of Philly to Center City, Philadelphia).
Some routes for traveling to and from the South New Jersey to Philadelphia are provided in Daniel Convissor's Bike Route Database for New Jersey
West
Reading.
The Schuylkill Valley River (rails-to-trails)
blacktop bike path will some day
travel all the way from downtown Philly to Reading. So far, however, it
stretches only from Philly to Oaks, a few miles NW of Valley Forge. Until
then, Rte 724 is direct (but busy). There are many very pretty back roads
in this region but I don't have a cue sheet that links them together.
I do, however, have routes for Garmin GPS's in Mapsource format. E-mail me
at miketordoff@comcast.net if you
want one.
Lancaster. Don't take Rt 30. Traffic is very heavy with many trucks and the road is narrow in places. It has no shoulder. PA Bike Route S travels through the center of Lancaster to just North of Valley Forge. From there, you can take the following: (From Rt S to Philly).
Pennsylvania Bike Route S.
This route takes the dead flat Schuylkill River trail from Paulings Rd, just
North of Valley Forge, all the way to Center City (From
Rt S to Philly).
Adventure Cycling
Atlantic Coast Route. The closest the Atlantic
Coast Route comes to Philadelphia is Norristown (the end of Section 2/beginning
of Section 3 of the AC route). From here the Atlantic Coast Route travels
on the Schuylkill bike path away from Philly toward Valley Forge. To
travel into Philly, simply ride the other way on the bike path. The path
is almost straight (and flat) 12 miles all the way to the Art Museum. A
cue sheet including minor diversions is provided here (From
AC-AC to Philly).
PA State roads
An obscure but very useful website has video clips of every foot of
every road maintained by PennDot (i.e., State but not local roads).
Any route can be previewed at the
PennDot VidLog site.
A map of the traffic volume on most PA State roads is available (requires Internet Explorer, doesn't work with Firefox).