Cycling and Bike Paths in the South Bay

Cycling in the South Bay is two different sports that share a coastline. There is the flat, paved beach path that runs the length of the Beach Cities and carries cruisers, e-bikes and strollers, and there is the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where the road climbs and the riders wear lycra. Both are governed by a patchwork of rules that change at each city line, and one of the most ridden stretches on the Hill has been closed to bikes since 2024. What follows is the current state of both, verified on the agency sites on September 17, 2026.

How far does the beach bike path go?

The Marvin Braude Bike Trail is 22 miles of paved path from Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades to Torrance Beach, open year-round and operated by Los Angeles County Beaches and Harbors. The South Bay holds its southern half: Playa del Rey, Dockweiler, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Torrance Beach, where it ends at the foot of the Palos Verdes bluffs. County Public Works maintains most of it; the stretch from First Avenue in Hermosa Beach around King Harbor to the south end of the Redondo Pier is a city-maintained on-street and harbor section rather than a beach path. The County publishes a mile-marker map on the same page and posts closures on its bikeway closure map, which is the place to check before a long ride rather than this page. When the path is wet, dark or crowded, the indoor version lives in a studio, and our guide to fitness studios by discipline covers where the cycling rooms are.

What are the rules on the Strand in each city?

The word Strand means different things a mile apart, and the rules follow the meaning.

Manhattan Beach keeps two separate surfaces: the Strand walkway is pedestrian only, and the bike path beside it is for bikes, with pedestrians barred from the path. Under the City’s 2023 e-bike ordinance, bicycles and e-bikes are prohibited on the Strand, on sidewalks, in Veterans Parkway and in the walk-only zone around the pier, and speed on the bike path is capped at 15 miles per hour. Fines start at $500 and parents of minors can be cited. Riders under 18 wear helmets, as state law requires everywhere.

Hermosa Beach has one Strand and shares it. Bikes, skateboards and scooters may ride the walkway at no more than eight miles per hour, yielding to pedestrians, and the block between 11th and 14th Streets becomes a walk zone whenever the lights are flashing. Anything with a motor is a different matter: an e-bike may not enter the Strand, Pier Plaza or the beach under power, and the June 2024 ordinance extended that ban to the Greenbelt and required rental companies to geofence their e-bikes so the motor cuts out in those zones. The pier itself is walk-your-bike.

Redondo Beach routes the path onto Harbor Drive and around the pier, where Chapter 3-1 of the municipal code bars skateboards and roller skates from designated bike paths and bans riding on signed sidewalks. The pier is walk-only for bikes, with racks at the entrance. Redondo is the only South Bay city on the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly Community list, at Bronze, and it opened a Class I path on Diamond Street in December 2023 that links the Torrance border to the Esplanade area.

Torrance spells its rules out in Municipal Code 62.1: no more than two abreast, no sidewalk riding in business districts or beside schools and parks, and where a usable bike path runs beside a road, riders use the path.

Can you still ride the Palos Verdes loop?

Not all of it. The loop most riders mean, out Palos Verdes Drive West, around the point on Palos Verdes Drive South and back over the Hill, has been broken since June 18, 2024, when Rancho Palos Verdes prohibited bicycles, motorcycles, scooters and all other two-wheeled vehicles on the two miles of Palos Verdes Drive South between Wayfarers Chapel and Schooner Drive. The reason is the Portuguese Bend landslide, which at that point was moving the road seven to twelve inches a week. The City’s Land Movement Updates page is the source of record: its September 9, 2026 entry says the prohibition was up for another 60-day extension at the September 15 Council meeting, that the road remains open to cars, and that regrading of the section riders call the ski jump may require temporary closures. The City’s official detour is Hawthorne Boulevard to Palos Verdes Drive North to Western Avenue. Rancho Palos Verdes has a funded project to add six-foot bike lanes on both sides of Palos Verdes Drive South from Conqueror Drive to the edge of the landslide area, still in design.

The rest of the Hill is open and the rules are ordinary road rules. Rolling Hills Estates striped 1.3 miles of bike lanes on Palos Verdes Drive North from Crenshaw Boulevard to its west city limit in 2013 and bars bikes and e-bikes from its equestrian trails. Palos Verdes Estates publishes its expectations for sharing the road: ride in the bike lane where one exists, no more than two abreast, and move right to let traffic pass. Rolling Hills is gated private property with no public roads. Rancho Palos Verdes has allowed non-motorized bikes on the pathways at Hesse Park, Eastview Park and the Point Vicente Interpretive Center since a 2022 pilot.

Which bike plans cover the rest of the South Bay?

Seven cities, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Lawndale and Torrance, adopted a shared South Bay Bicycle Master Plan in 2011, which El Segundo still hosts chapter by chapter. The newer layer is the South Bay Local Travel Network, a 243-mile system of low-speed streets signed with a rolling turtle for e-bikes, scooters and neighborhood electric vehicles, with the first corridors in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Lawndale and Hawthorne. Hawthorne adopted its own Active Transportation Plan on April 28, 2026. Inland, the County’s Bicycle Master Plan (adopted 2012, 831 miles of new bikeways through 2032) covers the unincorporated pockets; its South Bay pieces include the completed West Carson community bikeways and a 3.53-mile Class I gap closure on the Dominguez Channel Greenway due in 2032. At the north end, the Ballona Creek Bike Path connects Marina del Rey to Culver City and joins the beach path south toward Playa del Rey.

Is there bike share, and where do you rent?

Metro Bike Share does not operate in the South Bay; its stations end at the Westside. No South Bay city runs its own system. Rentals are shops on or near the path: Hermosa Cyclery at 20 13th Street in Hermosa Beach (bikes and e-bikes, seven days), Marina Bike Rentals at 505 North Harbor Drive in King Harbor (cruisers and hybrids only, since 1990), Beach E Biking on the top level of the Redondo pier parking structure at 129 West Torrance Boulevard (e-bikes and guided tours), and Beachside Bikes at 1611 South Catalina Avenue in Riviera Village. Rental e-bikes in Hermosa Beach are required to cut out on the Strand, so do not expect a throttle there.

What are the e-bike rules right now?

State law sorts e-bikes into three classes under Vehicle Code 312.5: Class 1 pedal assist to 20 miles per hour, Class 2 throttle to 20, Class 3 pedal assist to 28. A Class 3 rider must be 16 and helmeted at any age. Since January 1, 2026, AB 544 requires a rear red light or reflector at all hours, SB 1271 bars the sale of e-bikes and batteries that fail safety testing, and AB 875, carried by the South Bay’s own Assemblymember, allows police to impound a Class 3 e-bike ridden by anyone under 16. Modifying an e-bike to exceed its class has been illegal since 2025. The city layers above (Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes) sit on top of that, and the Peninsula school district now requires an e-bike safety course before a student can park one on campus. We keep a full, plain-English account in E-Bike Laws in the South Bay.

Who rides together, and when?

Beach Cities Cycling Club runs thirteen rides a week at four levels, most leaving from the Redondo Beach Pier, with a no-drop policy. PV Bike Chicks ride Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 8:30 AM and Wednesday at 9:30 AM from Malaga Cove Plaza, with Strand rides for beginners and the switchbacks up Palos Verdes Drive East for the rest. The Palos Verdes Bicycle Club lists Sunday 7:30 AM breakfast rides from the fountain at Malaga Cove. The South Bay Wheelmen are the racing club, and their event is the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix, a USA Cycling criterium on the streets around Valley Drive, run July 12 in 2026. The other fixture is not a ride at all: Tour de Pier puts rows of stationary bikes on the Strand at the Manhattan Beach Pier each May for pancreatic cancer research, closing Manhattan Beach Boulevard at the pier for the morning; the fifteenth edition is set for May 16, 2027.

Which group rides do people actually show up for?

Six of them, and they have been running long enough that locals refer to them by name rather than by day. Times and meeting points below are as the South Bay Wheelmen published them, checked on 17 September 2026. One caution the Wheelmen make themselves: apart from the Late Riser, these are not club-organized rides. Nobody is running them, nobody is responsible for you, and a fast group ride on open road is not a closed course.

If you want the actual routes rather than the meeting points, the Beach Cities club keeps a library of more than five hundred mapped rides at Ride with GPS, and the South Bay Bicycle Coalition Plus maps existing and proposed bikeway infrastructure across the eleven cities its plan covers.

Where do you ride a track?

Carson, and it is not a small thing. The VELO Sports Center at Dignity Health Sports Park, 18400 Avalon Boulevard, is a 250-meter indoor track of Siberian pine banked at 46 degrees in the corners. It is the largest indoor velodrome in the country and has hosted UCI World Championships. Most of the year it is open to riders of all levels.

You cannot simply turn up and ride. Every rider has to be certified first. The center lists a two-day Introductory Series at $270, held the second Saturday and Sunday of the month at 8:00 AM, and a single-session Accelerated Class at $100 on Sundays at 8:00 AM for riders who already have track experience elsewhere. Track bikes are provided if you do not own one, and helmets are required. Riding the track is open to ages 16 and up, with separate programming for ages 8 to 16.

If you only want to find out whether you like it, there is a Sample Session for $25, Monday through Friday between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM. It does not certify you for anything else, which is the point. Prices and session times are from the venue, checked 17 September 2026.

What we could not verify

The outcome of Rancho Palos Verdes’ September 15, 2026 vote on the bike prohibition had not been posted when we checked; treat the ban as in force until the City’s update page says otherwise. Manhattan Beach was reported in May 2026 to have tightened its e-bike rules again (phones, earbuds, wheelies); the City’s own pages did not yet reflect it, so it is not stated as law here. Redondo Beach’s Bronze award year and renewal status are not on the League’s public list. The County’s closure map would not load for us, so no closure is asserted or ruled out. Torrance and Carson publish no bikeway map we could find. The Legislature’s own site blocks automated reading, so the e-bike statutes above are cited through the California Highway Patrol’s summaries.

What does this mean for where you live?

If the bike is the commute, the path matters more than the view: a Sand Section or South Redondo address puts the Strand at the end of the block, and El Segundo and Manhattan Beach sit on the Local Travel Network’s first corridors. If the bike is the weekend, the Hill is the draw and the closure on Palos Verdes Drive South is the thing to watch, because a Portuguese Bend or Seaview address now sits on the wrong side of it for a loop ride. Either way the button below runs a live search across the sixteen Beach Cities MLS areas.

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