This post wraps up my series on New Westminster bike rides. It’s a great little city packed with parks and historic sites, breweries, pubs, cafes, and even an urban winery. The city is on a hill, but it offers some fairly easy riding across the ridges as well as it mostly flat rides along the riverfront. (I don’t like hills either, so I’ve mapped out routes that minimize climbs.)

It’s also well-connected to neighbouring cities like Burnaby and Coquitlam. (Queensborough feels like a different city because it’s so flat – and is basically on an island shared with the city of Richmond.) You can usually plan your ride so that you end up at a transit station for the journey home.

Getting here on SkyTrain

All of the rides described here start at a SkyTrain station. New Westminster has five of them, and I’ve mapped out rides starting at 22nd Street, New Westminster and Braid Stations.

You can bring your bike on the train except during rush hours in the direction of the rush (from 7-9 am westbound or 4-6 pm eastbound on the Expo/Millennium Lines). Up to two bikes per carriage are allowed. Try not to enter doors already occupied by a wheelchair or stroller or block courtesy seats just inside the doors.

Getting around the city

The three main designated bike routes in New West are:

  • BC Parkway (mainly following Expo Line from central Surrey to False Creek in downtown Vancouver through downtown New West and Quayside)
  • Central Valley Greenway (mainly following the Millennium Line, the New West portion is along Columbia/East Columbia Street, then through Hume Park to Burnaby and Vancouver)
  • Crosstown Greenway (mostly along 7th Avenue in New West from 22nd Street to the Burnaby border at North Road)

Fun fact: It is legal to ride on most sidewalks in New Westminster. The exceptions are the sidewalks around business districts, including Columbia Street, 6th Street and 12th Street. You must ride with care and give way to pedestrians – it’s all in the Street and Traffic Bylaw. There are many quiet streets where’s safe to ride on the road, but when you have to travel on busy roads like McBride or Royal Avenue, sometimes the safest place to legally ride is the sidewalk.

The routes

See full maps and descriptions of each ride in the following posts:

Overall map

I hope to update this map with new rides as construction finishes on neighbouring areas. If you have ideas or experiences to suggest, please drop a comment below!