Nearly 29,000 bicycle trips, on average, were made across the four major New York City bridges that span the East River last year, making 2025 the fifth straight year to hit an all-time high for cycling journeys over the waterway’s crossings, amNewYork has learned.
The data, shared with amNewYork ahead of its Thursday release, was gleaned from the city Department of Transportation’s (DOT) annual bike counts. DOT conducts the census of cycling trips over the four East River crossings — the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, and Queensboro Bridge — over a seven-month period every year.
“More New Yorkers are hopping on bikes more than ever before—and that’s great news for our streets, our air, and our planet,” said DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn, in a statement.
Flynn said the soaring cycling numbers show that when the city invests in expanding its bike lane network, more New Yorkers will opt to travel on two wheels.
“Cycling is a fun, fast, and convenient way to get around the city—and these numbers show that when we build safe cycling infrastructure, more New Yorkers choose to bike,” he added. “This is a great reminder of why we will be doubling down on safe street designs and deliver bold new ideas to take cycling and street safety to the next level.”
The Transportation Department calculates its counts by averaging daily cycling trips over the East River bridges during the warmest months of the year — April through October, excluding holidays and rainy days, according to the agency.
DOT’s data shows that last year marked a 30% increase in cycling trips over the East River crossings compared to the same period in 2015 — when there were 22,000 average daily riders. It was also 18 times greater than ridership over the bridges when the city began recording the data in 1980.
September of 2025 was the busiest month for bike trips over the East River bridges with an average of 31,687 rides.
Last year’s bike count also showed that the Williamsburg Bridge remains the most popular of the four for cyclists, with an average of 9,464 daily crossings. Last month, the DOT, shortly after Mayor Zohran Mamdani was sworn in, smoothed over a bump coming off the bridge’s Manhattan exit that had vexed cyclists for years.
Furthermore, in 2025, the Brooklyn Bridge saw a 113% climb in ridership from 2021, the year that the city opened a two-way protected bike lane on the bridge’s Manhattan-bound roadway. The new lane took bikes off of the bridge’s overcrowded pedestrian path, giving cyclists far more space to traverse the crossing.
Ridership over the bridge spiked shortly after the new lane’s opening and has continued to soar since.
The city also installed separate bike and pedestrian paths over the Queensboro Bridge late last year — a move that could boost bike usage of that crossing as well.
