Each May, more than 30,000 cyclists suit up for New York’s Five Boro Bike Tour, a 40-mile ride on streets closed to cars that enters each of that city’s five boroughs, ending with a huge festival on Staten Island.
This May, it will be D.C.’s turn as organizers launch the D.C. Bike Ride, a noncompetitive, 17-mile bike ride en masse that will wind its way around many of the city’s monuments and landmarks.
The event, which will be held May 22, comes from Capital Sports Ventures, with founding sponsors Events D.C., CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, as well as Washington Area Bicyclist Association.
While there were a couple different iterations of such casual rides in the 1990s and early 2000s, D.C. Bike Ride will be the first time a ride of this size — organizers expect about 8,000 riders in its first year, with as many as 18,000 in future years — has been attempted in the District.
“Most of the other events of this scale are for the racing, competitive communities,” said Greg Billing of Washington Area Bicycle Association. “This is really focused on people who may not feel comfortable riding around D.C. streets day in and day out.”
Early bird registration for the race begins Wednesday; tickets cost $50 until Feb. 29 and $60 after that.
It will be the first event created by Capital Sports Ventures, a sports-focused venture capital firm and consultancy that was founded in 2013 by former Monumental Sports & Entertainment executive Greg Bibb. CSV’s mission is three-pronged: sports advising, investment in sports-related businesses and event creation.
“Recognizing the growth of biking in the Washington, D.C., region, and then realizing that there wasn’t a mass participation, closed road bike event for the marketplace, we saw an opportunity to create one that would ultimately promote biking, healthy lifestyle and street safety,” he added.
Reaction has been positive so far, he said. “We’re excited about it,” Bibb said of the ride. “We’re encouraged by the early feedback around what we’re trying to do here in D.C.”
Bibb declined to put an exact dollar figure on what the race would cost, saying only that it’s a “high six-figure” investment. A portion of the proceeds of the for-profit event will go to support WABA’s campaign around Vision Zero, a national initiative to end traffic fatalities.
The association will use the money to run eight D.C. neighborhood events surrounding traffic deaths, one for each ward of the city, as well as to host a regional summit to get other jurisdictions to sign on to Vision Zero. (So far, D.C. and Montgomery County have committed.)
The D.C. Bike Ride will travel around the National Mall, go around Georgetown via the Whitehurst Freeway, cross the Potomac and turn around at the Pentagon, and culminate with a festival — including yet-to-be-announced live entertainment — on Constitution Avenue NW near the U.S. Capitol.
The event will help further D.C.’s already ample reputation as a bike city, Billing said.
“We are absolutely ecstatic to have a major event back in D.C.,” he said. “If you look at our partner cities, New York, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, they all have a major closed-street, traffic-free bike event, that brings tens of thousands of people out.”
