Sydney’s Surprise Masterpiece: Riding the GreenWay
The words Sydney and bike infrastructure don’t usually belong in the same sentence, but right now there are genuine signs the tide is turning.
With the long-awaited Harbour Bridge cycle ramp edging towards completion, another major active travel project has quietly opened—and it is already proving popular.
It is called The Greenway, it runs through Sydney’s Inner West, and Ride On has ridden it.
Urban oasis. Cool. Calm. Properly planned. Impressive.
Those are the words that come to mind as I sit in the Busy Bee Vietnamese Café at Dulwich Hill, escaping the midday heat after riding around 30km from Sydney’s north side.
A perfect Bahn Mi appears, the flat white is sensational, and during the break I’m thinking ‘if Sydney keeps building cycling infrastructure like this, things are changing in a big way.’
And people are flocking to the new Greenway. Even on a weekday, the path was alive with walkers, riders, families, bunch riders, parents and kids. Genuinely surprised, I chatted with a couple of fellow riders along the way. One, equally as enthusiastic about the impressive infrastructure as I am, said “You should have seen it on Sunday!”
Running for six kilometres, the Greenway links two of Sydney’s busiest exercise routes: the Cooks River Cycleway at Earlwood and the Bay Run at Iron Cove. From there, riders can easily reach the CBD to the north or roll south towards Brighton-Le-Sands via the Cooks River. It feels connected, logical and long overdue.
And true to its name, the mostly-shaded canal and riverside ride is also surprisingly cool, especially on warm summer days. We rode it on 33-degree day, yet so much of the route felt cool, comfortable and more like 25.
Infrastructure Done Properly
The Greenway features plenty of shaded picnic areas, rest stops, seats, toilets, playgrounds, tennis courts, water stations and several bike repair stations. The ramps and boardwalks are superb, as is the Greenway’s showstopper, the Parramatta Road underpass.
For decades, Parramatta Road has been one of Sydney’s most intimidating barriers for bike riders with its six lanes of noise, fumes and general traffic chaos.
Until now, riders had to either struggle up the stairs or squeeze into lifts to cross the light rail bridge. Not anymore. The new boardwalk underpass sweeps beneath the traffic, being suspended above the water. It is beautifully engineered and genuinely thrilling to ride.
Public art features along the route, including two installations inside the tunnels. Signage, often the weak point of many cycleways the world over, is first-class, with clear directions to surrounding suburbs and key connections.
A Dream 25 Years in the Making
About 25 years ago, environmental planner Bruce Ashley was walking beside Hawthorne Canal in Sydney’s Inner West when he stopped to chat with two men planting native species alongside the path.
At the time, Ashley had already been thinking about how to link scattered pathways, pockets of bushland and the old goods rail line from Pyrmont to Dulwich Hill into a continuous “greenway”.
That idea, first explored in the mid-1990s when the state government asked him to assess potential cycle rail trails, has slowly but surely become reality.
Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne says the new continuous corridor will reshape how people travel across the area—especially once the Sydenham to Bankstown Metro opens late next year.
“This has been 20 to 25 years in the making,” he said. “It’s a great credit to the local citizens who imagined it in the first place and kept fighting for it for decades. To finally see it come to life is incredibly exciting.”
Cost wise, the project cost around over $50M, with the state government contributing $41 million, the Inner West Council $11M and the Commonwealth Government $6M.
Having ridden the Greenway and hearing about thousands of others enjoying it the week before Christmas, it’s clearly obvious that the project is priceless.
We’d love to hear your thoughts: Have you ridden the Greenway yet? What did you think?
