Almost everyone arrives here in a car, because the causeway is the only way on and there is no other option. Almost everyone then spends the week wishing they had got out of it sooner. Sanibel is one of the few American resort islands where the bicycle is genuinely the better vehicle, and the reasons are structural rather than sentimental.
Start with the ground. Nothing on this island stands more than a few feet above sea level, so there is no hill anywhere on the network — not a rise, not a bridge approach worth naming until you reach Blind Pass. Then add the roads. There is no traffic signal on Sanibel. Not one. Junctions are four-way stops, traffic moves at posted speeds that would embarrass a mainland arterial, and the path itself is separated from the carriageway rather than painted onto its edge. The City of Sanibel puts the network at more than 26 miles, running from Lighthouse Beach Park at the eastern point all the way west to the Blind Pass bridge.
The financial argument is blunter. Parking at every beach park on the island is metered and paid by the hour, and on a February Saturday the lot at Bowman's Beach fills early enough that the question becomes academic. Bike racks are free and they are never full. The same asymmetry applies at the wildlife refuge, where a car pays a ten-dollar entrance fee to drive the four-mile Wildlife Drive and a cyclist pays a dollar. Ride for a week and the rental has paid for itself twice over in parking and gate fees alone.
What the path is not is a wilderness trail. It runs beside roads for most of its length, through residential lanes, past shopping plazas on Periwinkle Way, along the edge of the refuge and out to the western beaches. You will share it with walkers, runners, dog walkers, people towing beach carts and a great many riders who have not been on a bicycle since childhood. Speed is not the point and the path is not designed for it.
One honest caveat before you plan a route. Hurricane Ian in September 2022 tore up long stretches of pavement, stripped the vegetation that shaded much of the network and knocked out a great deal of the Australian pine and sea grape canopy. Repairs have been made in stages over several seasons, and the island looks brighter and more exposed than the photographs in older guidebooks. Check the city's current path notices before you set out on a long ride, and expect sand across the pavement near the beach accesses after any blow from the west.
