WINNETKA >> For months, Josh Harris has hoisted his bicycle over or around a chain link fence blocking a pristine bike path along the Los Angeles River.

For him and other guerrillas of the so-called L.A. River Greenway, the city has dragged its feet too long to open it.

“The path could have been completely opened months ago, but instead it’s been stuck in limbo,” said Harris, 41, who rides his hybrid bicycle from his home in Winnetka to Los Angeles. “There are no safe roads in this area at all. This is vital.

“I’ve been drooling over this path since it started, and have been poaching it since … they just stopped working on it.”

Last weekend, Los Angeles County hailed the opening of an $11.4 million parkway on both sides of the L.A. River from its headwaters at Owensmouth Avenue in Canoga Park to Mason Avenue in Winnetka.

But the first residents in decades to sashay more than a mile from the river headwaters were stopped dead at the next downstream bike path leg.

A new L.A. Greenway built by the city to Vanalden Avenue in Reseda had been blocked by a closed half-mile segment.

Scheduled to open last June, the $4.6 million garden path south of the river between Mason and Winnetka avenues is slated to officially open next month, city officials and contractors say. The delays stem from late changes in asphalt sealant, striping and from measures to secure 45 solar light poles.

“The bike path in Winnetka will be a lively link between the L.A. River and the neighborhood, reflecting the vision of our community and my commitment to safer more convenient cycling routes for families,” said Councilman Bob Blumenfield, whose district includes the greenway, in a statement. “I couldn’t be more excited to bring it across the finish line soon as a real asset for our area.”

Next year, the city plans to open a $1.75 million pocket park at the confluence of the Los Angeles River at Aliso Creek at the end of Kittridge Street.

It’s all part of a grand plan for a 51-mile bike path along the Los Angeles River from Canoga Park to where it dumps into the sea at Long Beach.

The greenway is interrupted in the San Fernando Valley by vast gaps along the river on either side of the Sepulveda Basin, and a large swath from Sherman Oaks to Griffith Park. One hindrance: boxlike sections of the concrete river with no room to create any bike path.

“We’ve got roughly 30 miles open out of 51,” said Joe Linton, of Streetsblog LA, who has written a guide book about the L.A. River. “We’re seeing many new small parks, access points, bike paths.

“(But) the Valley is going to need some money to get all the bike paths across.”

On the unfinished section in Winnetka, workers put the finishing touches on the last of three city greenway construction phases from Mason to Vanalden avenues.

One man, bypassing an open construction gate for the newly striped and sealed path, walked his dog down the steeply angled concrete to the river. Like many residents, he wouldn’t wait for a pending grand greenway opening.

“My biggest foible as a dog walker and a bicyclist is they have the audacity to restrict our access,” said Jerry Ziberg, 49, of Canoga Park. “You enter in one location, everything is copacetic, then you reach an obstacle that requires contortions to get over.”

Harris said if city officials spent as much time finishing the path as in erecting barriers to keep people out they would have completed the greenway last spring. Now he says he’s eager for the ultimate river path.

“The goal of taking my bike all the way across the Valley through the Sepulveda Basin along the Los Angeles River to Los Angeles,” he said, “is a dream.”