Bike Walk Northside’s Fall Family Fun Ride

Lots of fun as usual getting on a costume, getting on a bike, and seeing what it would be like to ride a protected bike lane on Brook Road.

Thanks to Bike Walk RVA for lots of support.  I AM RVA, a great new organization promoting bike safety and helping local charities through the sale of very cool helmets, provided great swag and a new helmet for costume contest prizes!

Getting ready to ride on a temporary protected bike lane on Brook Road.

A perfect use for a cargo bike!

We should bike with capes on more often!

Bike to Work — Treats and a Rally!

Bike to Work Day is this Friday.  Could be that for you bike to work day is every day, which is awesome.  If it’s not, why not give it a shot?  You could find yourself addicted.

To help reward your diligent commuting or entice you into biking addiction, Bike Walk RVA has organized commuter stations at five different locations from 7-9 am.  You can get treats, smiles, and high-fives as you make your way to work:

• Floyd and Morris (VCU Monroe Park Campus)
• 2nd Street north of the Belvidere Bridge (VA War Memorial)
• Leigh and 11th just west of MLK Viaduct (MCV)
• 10th and Cary (James Center Plaza)
• Leigh and Lombardy (Across from Sugar Shack)

And if you already have your bike at work, why not head over to the James Center at noon for a Bike to Work Day Rally with Mayor Jones?  Here’s the scoop:

Bring or buy your lunch from one of downtown’s many food trucks, grab your bike, and gather with your friends and colleagues in the James Center Plaza (corner of S 10th St. and E. Cary St.) for a Bike to Work Day Rally and ride.  Mayor Jones will make a special announcement a little after noon, followed by a group ride up Main St., around Monroe Park, and down Franklin — following the route of the proposed protected bike lanes on Main and Franklin.

We’ll end in front of the Capital around 1 PM and send you on your way to work, smile on your face!

RSVP here if you plan to attend.  See you there!

Trying Out a Protected Lane on Brook Road and Loving It

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do this all of the time on Brook Road?  To encourage people of all ages and abilities to use bicycles to get around as well as have fun, we need spaces separated from cars (and lowering that speed limit wouldn’t hurt either).

About 80 riders of all ages turned out for the first-ever Spring Fun Family Ride on May 3.  

The event was organized by Bike Walk Northside and Bikablerichmond.com to encourage bicycling for fitness, transportation, and fun — and to highlight the need for a protected bicycle lane on Brook Road to connect Northside neighborhoods with VCU and downtown.  Rag and Bones Bicycle Co-op was on hand to help riders with bicycle adjustments and give away free bikes, and Holton Elementary School Principal David Hudson was joined Bike Walk RVA Director Max Hepp-Buchanan as costume contest judges.

Thanks to all of our volunteers, including Bike Walk RVA folks and Union Presbyterian Seminary for lots of support!

Winners of the costume contest got free tickets to the Children’s Museum of Richmond.

Members of Rag and Bones Bicycle Co-Op were helped by bicycle guru Kirk O’Brien in taking care of adjustments and repairs.

Help Make Bike Month 2015 the Best Yet

Bike Month is just a few weeks away!  Bike Walk RVA is hosting a volunteer gathering this coming Friday, April 10, 6-7 pm (with socializing afterwards), Richmond Bicycle Studio, 1717 Summit Ave.

Here’s what they say:

May is National Bike Month, and 2015’s will be the BIGGEST ONE EVER. We need your help!

Please join us for a fun, quick, and action-oriented meeting to figure out how we can work together to pull this off. Food and drink will be provided.

Click here to RSVP.  Hope to see you there!

Bike Walk Award and Southside Family Ride

Bike Walk Rocks

This may be old news to those avid RTD readers among you, but our own Bike Walk RVA beat out eight competitors to win this year’s People’s Choice Award for Best Advocacy Organization in the U.S. from Bicycling Magazine and the Alliance for Biking and Walking!  Congrats to Bike Walk RVA!

If you read this blog you have some idea of what the organization has been up to that attracted the nomination in the first place, but the RTD report offers some highlights.  And clearly they have some strong support in this region and elsewhere, since the final victory was based on voting.

The competition included local and state-level organizations from Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Minneapolis, San Diego, Delaware, Georgia, not to mention the Cascade Bicycling Club in Seattle, where Bike Walk’s director Max Hepp-Buchanan got his start before begin lured to Richmond.

Southside Family Walk and Bike 

One of the things that Bike Walk RVA has done to earn this recognition is to start Bike Walk Academy, an 8-week training session meant to encourage and educate citizen advocates for bicycling and pedestrian issues.  This is a really valuable program because an advocacy organization is only as good as its supporters and local advocates.

The academy graduates have formed groups to work on issues in each region of the city.  The southside group has been meeting with residents and working on organizing local residents and getting better bike lanes and cross walks.  They are also holding a family bike and walk event for next weekend, on Sunday 3/29, 1:30 p.m.  See details below.