Six out of ten, and thats being generous about the headwind stretch past Mirrabooka. The Reid Highway shared path: the northern suburbs commuter route gets talked up as the obvious way into the city from the northern corridor, and for a good chunk of its length that reputation holds up. For the rest of it you're riding alongside six lanes of freeway-speed traffic with a concrete barrier as your only company, which is fine functionally but not something I'd call scenic.
I rode the full stretch on the gravel bike two Sundays back, partly to check the surface after the recent resurfacing works near Beechboro Road, partly because I had a servo coffee debt to pay off at the BP on Alexander Drive. Worth knowing going in: this is a commuter corridor, not a recreational loop. Treat it like one and you wont be disappointed.
What the surface is actually like
Most of the path is sealed asphalt in decent nick, wide enough for two-way bike traffic without the usual Perth PSP squeeze where you're forced onto the verge every time a jogger comes the other way. There are gravel patches at a handful of side-road crossings, mostly where council verge work has chewed up the edge, so if you're running skinny road tyres at high pressure, drop a bit of air before you hit the Alexander Drive and Mirrabooka Avenue intersections. I run around 70 psi on the gravel bike for this one and it handles the rough bits without feeling vague on the smooth sections.
The gradient is mostly flat, which is the whole point of a highway-side path, but there are a few underpasses and overpasses where you'll get a short, sharp rise. Nothing that needs a granny gear, but enough to notice if you're hauling a loaded pannier on the e-bike.
Where it actually connects to
The eastern end ties into the path network that eventually gets you toward Whiteman Park, which is genuinely one of the better reasons to ride this corridor at all rather than just commute on it. If you've got a free Saturday and don't mind an extra twenty minutes in the saddle, pushing on to the park turns a flat, fairly joyless commute into something worth doing for its own sake. The bushland tracks and the open space out there are a different kind of riding altogether, and it's the payoff that makes the highway slog worthwhile.
Heading west, the path threads through to connections with the Andrews Road Shared Path, which is a reasonable link if you're coming from further out in the northern corridor and want to avoid doubling back through suburban streets. It's not glamorous either, but it does the job of getting you from A to B without unnecessary detours, which is really all you want from a feeder path.
The intersections are the real test
This is where Reid Highway earns its rating, or loses it, depending on the time of day. The signalised crossings at the major cross-streets are generally fine, well-marked, decent sight lines. But there are a few give-way points where you're crossing a slip lane with cars accelerating onto the highway, and that's where you need your head up rather than your eyes on a Strava segment. I've seen more near-misses at the Mirrabooka Avenue slip lane than anywhere else on this route, and I reckon it's the one spot council should prioritise if they're serious about calling this a commuter-grade path.
None of that is unique to Reid Highway. It's the same story on most of Perth's arterial-adjacent paths, and it's exactly the kind of detail WestCycle flags when they push councils on shared path standards. The peak body's position has always been that crossing treatments lag behind the actual path surface quality across the network, and riding Reid Highway end to end backs that up pretty clearly.
How it stacks up against the other PSPs
I'll say the mildly unpopular thing here: for a straight commute, I'd take Reid Highway over most of the riverside options people rave about. The river paths are nicer to look at, sure, but they're also clogged with dog walkers, prams and tourists on hire bikes by 8am, and you end up averaging the same speed as if you'd taken the highway path anyway, just with more near-collisions. Reid Highway isn't iconic and nobody's putting it on a postcard, but it moves you efficiently, which is the actual job of a commuter PSP.
If you want a genuine comparison point further south, the Armadale Road PSP is a decent yardstick. Similar concept, similar traffic-adjacent layout, similar trade-off between efficiency and ambience. Riders who've done both tend to agree they're closer in character than either is to the riverside loops, which tells you something about what actually makes a good commuter path versus a good weekend ride.
A quieter alternative if you've got the time
For those not pinned to a straight-line commute, the Wilfred-Nicholson Rd Shared Path is worth a detour if you're coming from the north-east and want fewer cars in your peripheral vision for a stretch. It won't save you time over the highway path, but it's a reasonable trade if your priority is a bit of quiet rather than raw efficiency. I wouldn't build a whole commute around it, but as a connector it earns its keep.
Gear notes for the ride
Bike choice matters less here than on most Perth paths, since the surface is consistently sealed. A hybrid or road bike will be perfectly comfortable the whole way, and you don't need the gravel bike's extra clearance unless you're planning the Whiteman Park extension where the fire trails get loose in patches. If you are pushing on that far, drop your tyre pressure by 10 to 15 psi before you leave the sealed path behind; the gravel sections out there have enough loose material to catch a rigid, over-inflated tyre off guard.
Lights are worth carrying even for a daytime ride, mainly for visibility at those slip-lane crossings rather than for seeing where you're going. A decent rear blinker does more for your safety on this route than anything else in the kit bag.
Where it sits in the wider network
If you're trying to work out whether Reid Highway deserves a spot in your regular rotation, it's worth reading the broader rundown on Perth's Principal Shared Path network: which PSP to actually ride, which puts this route in context against the rest of the city's commuter paths. Reid Highway isn't flat out the pick for a weekend ride, and it was never going to be. But as a way of getting from the northern suburbs into the city grid without fighting traffic lights every two hundred metres, it does exactly what it's meant to do, and does it reliably on most days of the week.
I'll be back out there with the Sunday bunch before the weather turns, mostly to see whether the council's patched up that gravel stretch near Beechboro Road. If not, it's going straight back on the list of things worth complaining about next time someone tells me this path is the best thing going in the northern corridor.