Bike Month aims to promote more of this.

Today marks the launch of Bike Month in the Richmond region. Bike Walk RVA is in its second year of coordinating a full month of bike-related events, with the help of dozens of volunteers from all over the region.

Events range from family-friendly neighborhood events, like kids’ bike parades (aka ‘Kidical Mass’), to rides with history, food, and even Star Wars themes. Activities will also include group bike commutes and bigger festivals like Dominion Riverrock (May 15-17). With over 30 events planned so far, there is something for everyone in different parts of the region.

“Bike Month is the time of year when Bike Walk RVA can have a little fun encouraging grassroots volunteers and enthusiasts to not only focus on building safe spaces for people who walk and bike but enjoy the social and active benefits of getting out to ride,” said Brantley Tyndall, Community Engagement Coordinator for Bike Walk RVA. “Understanding that Richmond’s Bike Month is part of a national movement helps folks feel like part of a bigger vision – that anyone, anywhere, should be able to enjoy riding at any time for any reason or trip.”

Click here for a full list of bike month events, and to see the Bike Month poster.

Richmonders ride through Monroe Park during Bike to Work Day 2013. Credit: Phil Riggan

Bike-Friendly Business District Announced as Part of Bike Month
Also in celebration of Bike Month, a group of businesses in the Bellevue neighborhood along MacArthur and Bellevue Avenues have partnered in collaboration with Bike Walk RVA and Bellevue resident and BikeableRichmond.com blogger Jason James to form the ‘Bellevue Bike-Friendly Business District.’

It will serve as the city’s first self-proclaimed bicycle-friendly business district, and participating businesses will offer discounts and other special deals for people who arrive by bike during the month of May. Participating businesses will be identified by window-clings displayed in their front windows starting May 1.

“As a resident of Bellevue, among the things I love about the neighborhood are the many restaurants and shops within biking distance from pretty much anywhere in Northside,” said Jason James. “It’s already a pretty bike-friendly area if you’re traveling within it, and yet I get the feeling that not many people use bicycles to run errands or visit local shops and restaurants. The idea is that people might be tempted to try it if they have a little extra incentive. ”

Click here for a map of participating Bellevue businesses and nearby bike racks

Do you know who Joey Parent is? If you’ve spent much time outside in Richmond over the past few years, you’ve probably passed him on the trails or the water. Parent leads the Outdoor Adventure Program for VCU. I wanted to share this video from Hunter Davis because A) It’s really well done and B) It’ll introduce you to one of the local leaders in RVA’s outdoor recreation scene.

Now that the weather is warming, our friends at Home on the James and Crossroads Coffee and Ice Cream are bringing back a popular movie series: Bike-In Theater.

From their press release

It’s bikes. It’s movies. It’s beer and fun! Bike-In-Theater is back this weekend at Crossroads on Saturday, April 11 for an evening of Adventure Cycling. The show starts at 7 p.m. with Joey Parent and Paul Hansbarger (Wanderlust Gear) presenting a multimedia exhibit on Bikepacking.

Following their display (and a couple beverages), we fire up the screens with a couple locally-edited films including the highly anticipated GAPCOT edit from Richmond’s nicest outdoor personality, Max Posner. The evening concludes with Mike Dion’s feature film ‘Inspired to Ride’, which chronicles the inaugural self-support TransAmerica Race!

Coqui Cyclery will be on location joining our Bike-In-Theater block party to make sure everybody who attends has a great time. Best of all, it’s free! Ride bikes, drink beer, watch movies: Bike-In-Theater.

A bike boulevard in Palo Alto. Credit: Bikeable Richmond

Maybe you’ve heard by now that late yesterday the Richmond Planning Commission approved the long contemplated/sought/worked on/argued over Floyd Avenue Bike Boulevard proposal.

At this point, work should begin in the spring, unless City Council chooses to overrule the decision (which seems unlikely). Both the Times-Dispatch and Bikeable Richmond offer blow-by-blow details on the plan itself, so I won’t go into those here. But I do highly recommend you check out Bike Walk RVA Director Max Hepp-Buchanan’s piece on the Sports Backers’s blog. He does a great job of going behind the ins and outs of urban/traffic planning to lay out the significance of the vote and what it could mean for other projects going forward.

Bottom line, it was a good day — maybe not a perfect day, but a good day — for RVA’s bicycle infrastructure proponents.

This looks really cool.

As the top cyclists in the world compete at the 2015 UCI Road World Championships, Virginians and visitors from all over the globe will get their chance to tackle the same climbs and cobblestones that make up the championship course during two unique, public participation events.

Richmond 2015, the organizing committee of the 2015 UCI Road World Championships, and the Sports Backers, announced today that they are partnering to produce “Conquer the Cobbles,” a pair of evening public participation events taking place in conjunction with September’s world championships. The events include a running race and bike ride that will give participants a chance to experience the same Road Circuit Course that will be contested by competitors from more than 70 countries.

Riders climb the famous Libby Hill cobblestones. Credit: Richmond.com

On Thursday, Sept. 24 beginning at 7 p.m., participants can enjoy a 10-mile running race that showcases the history and beauty of Monument Avenue as well as the challenging climbs of Libby Hill and 23^rd Street. The following night, Sept. 25 beginning at 7 p.m., cyclists will get their crack at the championship circuit that awaits the best riders in the world. The riding event is limited to 2,015 entrants. Both events will provide participants with the safety of a completely closed course, live announcers and a festival atmosphere.

The Elite Women and Elite Men will compete for World Championships on the Road Circuit Course on Sept. 26 and 27, respectively.

“Imagine getting the chance to play Augusta the day before The Masters or Centre Court during Wimbledon’s fortnight,” said Tim Miller, chief operating officer of Richmond 2015. “This truly is a unique opportunity for riders and runners to test themselves on the same course that will challenge the world’s best cyclists.”

Bike Walk RVA’s ‘Bike Academy’ will train community members to advocate for new bikeways and safer streets.

I first wrote about the Sports Backers’ plans for a “Bike Walk RVA Academy” back in August. The idea, said Max Hepp-Buchanan, the SBs’ Director of Bike Walk RVA, was to create an “effective community of advocates on the ground making sure (the city’s new bike-related projects) are designed with people age 8 to 80 in mind.”

The first Academy launched on October 1, and last month the first class of 20 community bike/walk advocates graduated. The response to the program was so positive that the Sports Backers announced yesterday they’ll be re-launching the Bike Walk RVA Academy in February.

“The Autumn 2014 program received 65 applications for 20 available spots,” said Hepp-Buchanan. “We couldn’t possibly accept everyone we wanted in the first round of the program, so we’ve decided to expedite the re-launch of the Bike Walk RVA Academy in Richmond. We want to take this unique opportunity to develop as many effective advocates for walking and biking infrastructure in the city before moving the program into the surrounding counties this fall.”

The Bike Walk RVA Academy is an eight-week program designed to develop passionate advocates in Richmond into on-the-ground leaders in the movement for comfortable and connected walking and biking infrastructure. Participants will be empowered with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to effectively advocate for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects in their neighborhoods that allow everybody to get where they need to go on foot or by bike.

The Bike Walk RVA Academy aims to train and equip community leaders. Credit: Sports Backers

“With the final draft of the City’s Bicycle Master Plan coming out soon, and now with talk of a bike share program in Richmond, we need strong voices in our communities,” explained Hepp-Buchanan. “You shouldn’t have to be strong and fearless to ride a bike or walk to places you need to go on a regular basis.”

Beginning on February 25, 2015, the Bike Walk RVA Academy will meet once a week and wrap up by the end of April. People of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities are encouraged to apply.

The Bike Walk RVA Academy is offered free of charge, but entry into each program is competitive. Applications for both programs are now being accepted through January 30. Full workshop schedules, more information, and the online applications can be found at www.sportsbackers.org.

Back in October, Richmond City Council passed a resolution adopting a “Complete Streets Policy.” As RVA News reported recently, the resolution puts city officials on the hook to create and implement guidelines that’ll ensure future transportation improvement projects will be planned, designed, and constructed with pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit passengers in mind, in addition to motorists…City officials now have one year to create those implementation guidelines, which will be included in the City’s construction standards manual.

Bike lane approaching the MLK Bridge near VCU. Credit: Phil Riggan

This talk of a Complete Streets Policy reminded me that the city is also working on a Bike Master Plan, something that I feel like has been referred to in news reports as “almost complete” for a long time. So I gave Jakob Helmboldt a call for an update. Helmboldt is the Bicycle, Pedestrian and Trails Coordinator for the city, and he’s the one, I figured, who’d be knee deep in the bike master plan. Helmboldt explained that the Bike Master Plan is actually “being done as kind of an appendix to the strategic multi-modal transportation plan” that was completed over a year ago by the city. The multi-modal plan had some vague bike stuff in it, but the Bike Master Plan was created as a change order to that plan and is really intended to get into specifics for bike infrastructure and planning in the city.

Helmboldt had just received a draft of the plan from transportation planning consultant, Alta, and was making edits, additions and subtractions. So in one sense, the plan really is almost done. But it’s also part of the multi-modal plan, which Helmboldt said won’t go through official adoption process until sometime next year.

The good news is that while the Bike Master Plan won’t become official until next year, it’s already guiding public works decisions.

“To a degree there’s been sort of a parallel process,” Helmboldt said. “We’ve already been identifying some key corridors that we needed to start aiming for, started getting some of the design work done. So, the Manchester Bridge, the Lee Bridge are pretty much 90 percent planned for — getting those re-striped and marked for buffered bike lanes. There’s been this process where we filtered out some things that we knew we’d be moving forward on because we obviously didn’t want to wait for this process to be wrapped up.”

A complete street approach in Stockholm, Sweden.

You can see that in the new bike lanes on Forest Hill Avenue, Brookland Parkway and the Martin Luther King Bridge. Helmboldt also stressed that the Bike Master Plan won’t be just a snapshot of what Richmonders want right now.

“This is a living document. Because it’s aimed at infrastructure stuff, it’s gonna be a roadmap toward implementation. Every five years we’ll go in and update it.”

For example, he said, the arrival of Stone Brewing, “that’s providing a bit of an impetus for the Gillies Creek Greenway, which was conceived from the bike/ped trails commission back in 2010. With Stone going in right there, that’s right at the southern terminus of the greenway and that connects right into the Virginia Capital Trail. So (Stone) could potentially spur development of that.”

“As these opportunities come up we start putting those things into action.”

Bottom line: The Bike Master Plan isn’t done, but it’s very much alive and guiding Richmond’s next steps toward greater bike/ped friendliness.

Amy George has been part of RideRichmond since its inception in 2010. The non-profit, she said, was founded to help advocate for bicycle-related issues in the area. But since that time, a number of other organizations have formed with similar missions.

Encouraging more of this is the idea behind the first Richmond Women’s Cycling Summit.

“(They) started doing on a full time basis what we were just doing on a volunteer basis, groups like BikeWalkRVA and Ram Bikes. We we kind of stepped back in the spring or summer and thought, ‘You know, what is it that is not being addressed? Women’s cycling is definitely a hot button issue nationally. That was something that wasn’t being addressed in Richmond, so we decided to take it and run with it.”

Thus was born the first-ever Richmond Women’s Cycling Summit, which will take place tomorrow night at the Virginia War Memorial at 7 p.m.

George cited surveys showing that while 82 percent of women hold favorable views of cycling, 76 percent of bike trips (of any kind) were taken by men in the most recent survey year. The question is, “What’s causing that gap? What are the issues locally that can be addressed?

“Then we want to start providing information on how to get involved in different types of cycling. Where should you go to get the information to be confident on a bike?”

George said the summit, for which 120 women have already registered, isn’t focused on any one type of cycling. “We want to talk about what the barriers are to getting on a bike and riding it more. We’re trying to reach your average community resident, a very broad section of society. We want to normalize cycling, to have it be something where it’s not an unusual part of your daily life.”

The summit activities actually start at 5 p.m. with a casual ride from Lamplighter Coffee to the War Memorial. From 6 to 7 there will be a social hour with refreshments provided by Lamplighter, and at 7 p.m. a panel of seven women, including George, will dive into the issues, hear from the crowd and come up with ways to get more Richmond-area women on bikes.

The event is free, George said, but registration is encouraged so organizers know how many chairs to set up and how much food and drink to make available.

The U.S. Cycling team will be in Richmond next week to preride the Richmond 2015 courses.

Just yesterday, Richmond 2015, the organizing committee of the 2015 UCI Road World Championships, and USA Cycling announced that they will host a two-day training camp next week for nearly two dozen elite-level cyclists to train together and familiarize themselves with the courses used when cycling’s preeminent competition is held in Richmond in September 2015.

Participating in the camp, to be held on Oct. 22 and 23, will be many of America’s top male and female riders – including Taylor Phinney, Evelyn Stevens and Virginia natives Joe Dombrowski, Andrea Dvorak, and Ben King– many of whom will be getting their initial look at the courses for the 2015 Worlds, which are coming to the United States for the first time since 1986. In addition to team meetings and strategy sessions, the riders will train by riding portions of the time trial and road courses. Additionally, Team USA will participate in community outreach events and be introduced to other sights and sounds of Richmond.

“The 2015 UCI Road World Championships are 11 months away and we are already beginning preparations for our Team USA athletes and staff,” said USA Cycling CEO & President Steve Johnson. “This training camp in Richmond will help familiarize our 2015 world championship team hopefuls with the course so they can begin the all-important mental preparation for next year’s event. The camp will also allow our athletes to interact with the people of Richmond as we start the countdown to one of the biggest events in the 2015 cycling calendar.”

Tim Miller, Chief Operating Officer of Richmond 2015, said, “We have spent countless hours over the past few years designing courses worthy of the world’s best cyclists. To say that we’re thrilled to showcase them to Team USA is an understatement. At the same time, we’re delighted to introduce them to Richmond and Central Virginia, which will be the center of the cycling universe for nine days next September.”

Libby Hill will be among the challenges Team USA faces in the 2015 World Cycling Championships.

Miller added, “The training rides will take place mid-morning on Oct. 22 and 23 and will not involve major road closures. We will use a rolling closure which will not cause a significant impact on traffic, while allowing the athletes a safe environment in which to familiarize themselves with the courses.”

The 2015 World Championships will be held Sept. 19-27, 2015 and is expected to attract 450,000 onsite spectators and a worldwide TV audience of 300 million over the nine days of the event. More than 1,000 cyclists – elite men and women, under 23 men and junior men and women – from more than 75 countries compete for their countries, just as they do in the Olympic Games, in three disciplines: the traditional road race, individual time trial and team time trial.

This time of year, sometimes I look at the calendar and wonder how much sleep Sports Backers employees get.

The Tour of Richmond returns for the third year this weekend. Credit: Sports Backers

Back in late August, the group helped put on the growing Patrick Henry Half-Marathon in Ashland. Then last Friday and Saturday the Maymont X-Country Festival offered local runners a 5K on the Maymont grounds and an 8-miler on the trails of the James River Park System. This Saturday the 3rd annual Martin’s Tour of Richmond — bike rides of 101, 78, 59 and 29 miles around the Richmond region — rolls into Richmond International Raceway. Online registration is closed, but you can still do walk-up registration at RIR on Saturday morning at RIR if you want to participate.

At the close of online registration yesterday, a total of 1,150 riders were signed up, breaking the previous record of 1,105 riders in 2013. The event kicks off with the pre-ride party on October 3rd at the Richmond Raceway Complex from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., with food and beer for sale, along with live music, vendors, and sponsors. Registered riders also will be able to pick up their participant packets for Saturday’s ride at the party.

But it’s not just a good weekend for bike riders. On Saturday morning, road runners have their pick of two local 5Ks: the 5K Eagle Challenge in Bon Air and the Mustangs 5K in Midlothian. And on Sunday trail runners will head out to Bear Creek Lake State Park 45 minutes west of Chesterfield County for the mostly flat but challenging Cumberland Multi-Use Trail Half-Marathon.

Bass fishing great Mike Iaconelli will meet the public at Green Top on Sunday afternoon.

With the weather starting to slowly turn to fall, area anglers are heading out to our many waterways to catch fish moving into their fall patterns. But for those who won’t be on the water on Sunday afternoon, here’s a great Plan B: Bass angling legend Mike Iaconelli will be at Green Top on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. signing autographs and chatting with the public. This is a really cool chance to pick the brain of a former Bassmaster Classic champion and B.A.S.S. angler of the year. Very cool stuff.