Bike Advocacy Groups Play Big Role in RVA to DC Ride
By: Richie Bozek
On the morning of July 23, hundreds of people on bikes will take off from Richmond and pedal north to our nation’s capital in the inaugural RVA to DC ride. The two-day, 156-mile event on July 23-24 will grow support for Sports Backers’ mission to build active communities while showcasing some of the best tourist destinations and historic sites in Virginia.
Equally important is the fact that RVA to DC is providing an opportunity for people to join together for the common cause of bicycle and pedestrian safety and awareness.
Aside from challenging people with a two-day ride, the event aims to empower participants to become advocates for improvements to the quality and quantity of safe, connected spaces to bike and walk in Virginia. Five different bike and pedestrian advocacy groups are involved with the event and serve as the official event charities: Bike Walk RVA, the East Coast Greenway Alliance, The League of American Bicyclists, the Fairfax Alliance for Better Biking, and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.
Sports Backers is producing the event this year after extensive research into course options and logistics. Bike Walk RVA, which was founded by Sports Backers in 2012, is the main facilitator of the event. Last year Bike Walk RVA previewed the ride, taking a small group of riders from Richmond to Washington, D.C., to map out what the course and experience would be like. Much like the RVA to DC riders will do, the group stayed overnight in Fredericksburg and completed the trip to the D.C. area during day two.
“That was a good opportunity to test things out and explore,” said Max Hepp-Buchanan, the director of Bike Walk RVA. “Now we’ve got a good route, we’ve got rest stops planned at all the important places and we’re ready to fire this up as a full-on event.”
The RVA to DC course will take participants through a variety of cycling environments from rural roads to paved trails to neighborhood streets and give them an idea of what could work best in their home communities. 
“It will help raise awareness of what feels the most safe and comfortable to people and what they can advocate for in their own communities,” Hepp-Buchanan said.
For the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA), that community is a large one. ECGA is an organization that connects 3,000 miles of biking and walking trails, from Maine to Florida, to form the East Coast Greenway.
According to Niles Barnes, Director of Greenway Programs, there is much more work to be done for the Greenway between Richmond and D.C. There is interim road routing right now, but that is far from what the ECGA is envisioning.
“For us, [the goal] is definitely completing a safe, traffic-separated Greenway between Richmond and D.C.,” Barnes said. “This event can help raise awareness of that goal and the incredible, multiple benefits that would come from having such a facility.”
Another group on a wider scale involved in the event is The League of American Bicyclists. Formed in 1880, The League now has over 100,000 people involved in their efforts to improve riding conditions and advocate for more paved roads for biking. The League is based in Washington, D.C., so partnering with the RVA to DC ride was a natural fit for the organization.
RVA to DC also joined forces with advocacy groups in surrounding areas of the ride’s end point at Gateway Park in Arlington, including the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) and the Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling (FABB).
“We need to make sure bicycling in the Commonwealth is embraced by VDOT, legislation, and the general assembly better,” said Jeff Anderson, the president of FABB.
In recent years, FABB has been influential in accomplishments like the passage of a Bicycle Master Plan in Fairfax County, which provides the Board of Supervisors an ability to enforce it’s Comprehensive Plan when it comes to redevelopment, the inclusion of bicycling facilities in all new street plans proposals, and encouraging Fairfax County Public Schools to hire a full-time Safe Routes to School coordinator to promote walking and bicycling to school. Other victories include ensuring the widening of I-66 in Northern Virginia to include a parallel bike and pedestrian trail.
In Fairfax County, the course for the event takes riders on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, as well as along the Fairfax County Parkway. While the W&OD Trail is incredibly popular, Anderson says that with more maintenance, the Fairfax County Parkway could be a valuable amenity to cyclists as well.
Regarding RVA to DC in general, Anderson hopes that the routine maintenance and upkeep of bike and pedestrian infrastructure is seen as being just as important as building new facilities. “We need to spend maintenance dollars on our facilities versus building them and leaving them to nature.”
WABA, based in Washington D.C., serves bicyclists in Maryland and Virginia suburbs. As an organization, WABA has a five-year goal of tripling the number of individuals using bikes for recreation, transportation and fitness, as well as a 20-year plan to build a transportation network where all residents live within one mile of a dedicated place to ride a bike.
“The ride is an opportunity to show public support for safe area bicycling and raise issues that affect bicyclists every single day,” said Greg Billing, the executive director of WABA.
One such issue expressed by Billing is traffic.
“Bicycles are often forced to take the long way to get somewhere because it’s the safest way,” Billing said. “One of the primary reasons people don’t bike is that there isn’t infrastructure that connects where they are and where they want to go, or they don’t feel safe doing it.”
Excitement is building not only for the first-ever event in coming weeks but also for future rides similar to RVA to DC and the positive impact they can have. Participants are sure to have a great experience on the roads and trails from Richmond to D.C., and the hope is that they keep those experiences in mind as they return to their communities to become advocates for safe and connected bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
“Obviously our first official year will be mainly comprised of dedicated local riders,” Hepp-Buchanan said. “But this can really snowball into something that becomes the main advocacy event in the mid-Atlantic.”
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More information for RVA to DC can be found at www.sportsbackers.org. Online registration is available until July 20, with walk-up registration available July 22-23.