2022 US Trip – Day 6 (Morning Walk Along the High Line in New York Part One)

I took this photo with suitable care, but I spent a lot of time during my few days in New York looking at street views like this and waiting to be able to cross the road. At first I waited patiently for the green man, but New Yorkers don’t do that and I got to understand the flow of traffic on the city’s grid system and jaywalking like the locals. I find street views like this inspirational and they would be even more so without all the traffic, but that’s just the walker in me saying that.

Einstein loves New York apparently.

I’ve walked along the High Line before, but it’s such an inspirational idea for walkers and so well delivered that it seemed a useful way to spend the time before my Amtrak train departed the city. In short, the High Line is a former elevated railway line which had started to fall out of use by the late 1970s. Nearly demolished in the 1980s, it was saved and some visionaries arranged for some sections to be turned into an elevated park.

Some odd things happen in this elevated park, but they’re exciting, as crime is very low and misdemeanours much lower than in other city parks. It is also though very well funded compared to other parks, it’s got something of a charm and talking point nature that isn’t easily replicated.

A sign handily showing the scope of the walkways and that new bit in darker green towards the top is new to me (which is an excuse for a separate post), so I wanted to have a walk to there. There’s a handy “you are here” sign on the map to show where I was, so towards the southern end.

Anyway, enough text, now I have lots of photos….

And this is now the Hudson Yards development that I wrote about earlier on during the week, with the Vessel building just in short towards the right of the photo. It is a really quite invigorating walk and there’s talk of creating a 1.2 kilometre version in London between Camden Town and King’s Cross. For anyone interested there’s more about that project at https://www.camdenhighline.com/, but all credit to them for wading through the amount of documentation they need to read and produce, some of which are explained in the technical feasibility study section.

There’s more of the High Line now open which bends around the left in the above photo, and so that means yet another post is coming soon. Woooo!