This trail will take you all the way from Van Cortland Park up to the Croton Dam. I split it into 2 rides with the halfway point being the Cuomo bridge in Tarrytown. There are lots of street crossings with high curbs and a few spots that are so steep you will have to walk the bike. The dam at the end is the reward but be careful with the on road sections. Road bikes are not advisable as the path is only paved through Ossining. It hooks up with the Briarcliff-Peakskill Trail up at the dam if you’re feeling your oats and want to extend the day. Bring a map for this one.

April 2021: Hadn't been on the trail a couple of years, hoped they had caught up on maintenance. No such luck. Long stretches full of cracks, bumps, sunken spots and washboarding. It was a teeth-rattling experience. Not recommended, esp. for road bikes.

DO NOT TRY THIS TRAIL ON THE ALLEY POND SIDE. CLOSED

Construction has been completed on the trail heading north up town. There are now flat concrete square patches where there where bumps and bruise. Smoother ride.

Awesome trail. I consider myself a novice rider and I found this trail very enjoyable. There was the perfect amount of challenging areas on the trail...would highly recommend this trail to all riders

A hidden gem in Queens. The actual Vanderbilt section might only be 3 miles but you can bike from Alley Pond Park near the tennis bubble all the way to Citifield in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. That’s more than 8 miles of biking only crossing 4 or 5 streets. All of it is through or alongside parks where cars cannot run you over. Great, underutilized trail!!!

This is not really a one long trail but a series of segmented trails. While the beginning of each segment is marked with an "OCA" post, at the end of most segments there is no indication about where to find the next thread of the trail. Often you have to go through busy suburban streets to make the connection, some of which are quite dangerous. Other reviews recommended using GPS on your phone, but Google maps only indicates where the various trail segments are and it is difficult to find out how they connect. My friend & I attempted to do the northern half of the trail from Tarrytown up to the Old Croton reservoir. When you get to the Clearview School in Scarborough, you have to ride on a very busy Rt. 9, which has no shoulder, until you can take up the trail on Scarborough Rd. When we got to Ossining, the trail ended with no indication how to continue, so we again had to ride on Rt. 9. Then my friend hit a broken drainage grate on the side of the street, which was covered with leaves so that she could not see the gap in the pavement. It threw her head-first onto the asphalt. She was knocked out for several minutes, had a concussion, was bleeding profusely and nearly broke her neck. I called an EMT which took her to a hospital, where she stayed for two days and had stitches to her face and several tests. She was lucky she was not paralyzed (thanks to wearing a helmet). Exercise GREAT caution if you take the Ossining part of the trail. Some of the other segments are O.K. but some of them are just like riding through peoples' backyards.

Great walk. But the section north of Woodhaven station is a dead end. I had to go back and walk city streets for a long section. All in all great walk from Soundview ferry station in the Bronx to Bronxville train station. I will return fir the next section

Great trail. Southern section paving is beautiful. Trail is clean with surprisingly little litter or debris. Some sections in southern Westchester seem like they laid pavement directly on top of the old rail road ties, but newer sections are very smooth. Safe for family rides with minimal road crossings. Mostly flat or shallow grade (up to 100’ per mile). Beautiful scenery through parks. Too bad that this route does not continue South through Van Cortlandt Park and connect into the bike networks of Manhattan. (About 2 miles away.) Some sections are very near the Saw Mill Parkway and Major Deegan. Parts of the Saw Mill / Bronx River still need cleanup. And access points in southern Westchester to the towns are not great. (Be prepared to street ride if you want refreshements.)