Yesterday, the Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition — an new organization made up of 50+ businesses and organizations that support building a Richmond region that is bikeable for everyone — sent the below letter to Richmond City Council. In it they ask the body to allocate $3 million in the FY 2015 budget for new on-street bikeways, plus $3.5 million to ensure the completion of the Brown’s Island Dam Walk. City Council action on the mayor’s proposed budget is due by the end of May.

Click here to follow the debate over funding the Brown’s Island Dam Walk and here for info on the mayor’s lack of budget support for bike infrastructure.

The Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition also has a page where individuals can write City Council and join with them in asking for these funding allocations: http://bit.ly/1gHJcmg

Dear Richmond City Council,

Recognizing that we are in a critical budget window, the Greater Richmond
Bicycle Coalition urges you to dedicate significant city funding to a
network of bike infrastructure that can connect residents across the city to
wherever they want to go: work, school, shops, parks, and more. This
includes safe and convenient crossings of the James River. Experts close to
these projects estimate needing $3 million dollars to complete a network of
20-miles of bikeways and $3.5 million to build the Brown’s Island Dam Walk.
Please dedicate city funding to pay for these projects without relying on
federal grants, which cannot be guaranteed. Additionally, the window before
2015’s UCI Road Cycling World Championships is closing, and these projects
must start being designed and implemented immediately if we are going to
have anything new on the ground before several hundred thousand visitors
come to Richmond. There are only two paving schedules between now and then.

The Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition is a new organization formed to unify
the long-standing, but often disconnected voices in the cycling community.
Supplementing current riders, research suggests that as many as 60% of
non-cyclists would ride more with more and better bike infrastructure, too.
Our coalition is composed of over 50 bike advocacy organizations and
businesses representing all nine council districts, as well as each of the
counties in the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area. Our collective reach
is over 100,000 people. And our focus is to build the right infrastructure
for cyclists and those not yet riding to make transportation, recreation,
and healthy activity by bike safe, inviting, and convenient for those of all
ages and abilities.

Studies abound showing bike infrastructure to be a sound investment,
increasing retail sales, property values and tax revenues by up to 70%. A
network that connects the city is a high-return, low-cost investment that
will increase quality of life for all Richmonders, create a more welcoming
and energetic business environment, and draw new people to the city to live
and spend money. Let’s build a city where talented professionals will
relocate to live, work, and play that also serves the needs and demands of
current residents.

We hope you agree that now is the moment to commit to something great for
everyone in our city. A representative of the coalition will be reaching out
to you to meet to discuss the need for bike infrastructure and why now is
the critical moment for the City to allocate the funds to build it.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and please let us know if we can
work together to make these projects a reality.

Sincerely,

Greg Rollins, President
Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition, www.rvabike.org
100 Avenue of Champions, Suite 300
Richmond, Virginia 23230
info@rvabike.org
804.740.7914

The push for the Richmond Regional Ride Center was launched last April with a $50,000 budget amendment from Governor Bob McDonnell and a matching $50,000 grant from the Dominion Foundation.

The Richmond Regional Ride Center would include the downtown trails (show here) and the new Pocahontas SP trails. Credit: Jesse Peters

A year later, the total amount raised is up to $200,000 of the $800,000 needed to put 35 or so miles of mountain-bike optimized singletrack in Pocahontas State Park in time for the World Road Cycling Championships in September 2015. It’s a significant improvement, but still $600,000 short of the goal, said Greg Rollins, President of local mountain bike-advocacy group Richmond MORE.

The International Mountain Bicycling Association is in charge of the project, and “about 22 miles of trail tread have been laid out,” said Rollins. “IMBA has mapped the essential trail corridors. They’ve picked an area and decided what kind of trails to put in there.”

In the next month or so construction will begin.

“The plan is to start putting in gateway trail within the next month,” Rollins said. “Gateway would be beginner and handcycle trail. Some of that work needs to start before July… because of the state money that was put in.”

The new singletrack at Pocahontas would be combined with the many miles of downtown trails Richmond already has to qualify the area as an official IMBA Ride Center, of which there are only 17 worldwide.

Rollins explained that some of this second batch of money has come from anonymous donors, and $80,000 has come from a Trek trail-building fund that IMBA can pull from for projects of this magnitude. In addition, there are a number of grants out there that are in some stage of development. One is for federal money through the Recreational Trails Program. That could “be upwards of $200,000,” Rollins said. “We should know about that in the next few weeks.”

The ride center project is also a finalist, with three other locations on the East Coast, for a $33,000 grant from Bell Helmets. That money will be awarded based on social media participation starting in May (check back here for updates on how to participate).

Riders hit the trails at Pocahontas State Park. Credit: Phil Riggan

Rollins stressed that the $800,000 will pay for just the trails and a gravel parking lot. An additional $1.4 million will be needed to build a trailhead with restrooms and other amenities.

“I think (the trails are) going to happen,” he said. “I think the infrastructure piece (the trailhead) is going to be longer term, mostly because building stuff on state property is hugely expensive.”

For six years many in the Richmond paddling community have gathered every December to hang out, swap stories from the past year of paddling and watch each other’s homemade movies. Retro Movie Night, as it’s been dubbed, has become a popular event — this year it was held at The Camel — one that galvanizes that band of James River lovers.

Crossroads Coffee will the site of a bike-in movie night on March 26th.

Now one of the guys who helped get Retro Movie Night off the ground, wants to create a similar event (or series of events) for bike lovers.

Hunter Davis loves a good bike ride almost as much as he loves paddling the James, and with the success of Retro Movie Night, he figured might enjoy a similar excuse to gather, talk about past and upcoming two-wheeled adventures and watch related movies. Thus next Wednesday (March 26th) at Crossroads Coffee and Ice Cream at 7 p.m. will be born the first Bike-In Theater Night.

“My dad is an avid bike rider and we were just talking,” the Richmond native said. “He mentioned how it would be neat to do something similar to the Retro Video Night — showing movies and pulling out the biking community…We thought it’d be cool to do something like a drive-in movie theater but for bikers. So when they finish their bike ride, they could just all end up in one spot and talk about their bike ride and the adventures they had been on and then also have some biking flicks on a professional looking screen.”

So, on Wednesday, that’s exactly what Crossroads will host.

“I feel like Crossroads is pretty much the post-outdoor place to go,” Davis said. “If I get off the river, I usually go grab a beer at Crossroads, or a lot of times I’ll end my bike ride there and get a beer. I feel like they’ve always catered to the outdoor community and with the trails being right there and Riverside Drive…it just seemed like a natural fit for a place to be doing bike-in theater.”

Mountain biking in Forest Hill Park. Credit: Phil Riggan

Davis said there will be a couple of short movies made about the biking scene locally. Then they’ll also have a bike-related feature film (I suggested Rad).

The hope is that this will become a once-every-few-months event. “It’s just something to have fun with,” Davis said.

Later this month the International Mountain Biking  Association Trail Care Crew will be making a visit to the Richmond area. In addition to a hands-on, trail-building class on Saturday, March 29th at Pocahontas State Park, they are hosting two seminars for land managers and community leaders. “Better Living Through Trails” and “Land Manager Training” will take place on Friday, March 28th at the Virginia War Memorial. These events are free anyone that might be interested. Please register in advance at https://www.imba.com/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=381

The International Mountain Bicycling Association Presents: Better Living Through Trails

This presentation explores the positive relationships between communities and their trail systems. Trails as community assets can improve quality of life and livability in a community for both the biking and non-biking members, and can attract significant tourism dollars in addition in increasing overall quality of life. With statistics and case studies, participants will learn how to turn a quality community trail system into a destination trail system, and how to effectively market a trail system.

March 28th 10 a.m. Virginia War Memorial 621 S Belvidere St., Richmond, VA 23220

Subaru/IMBA Trail Care Crew Land Manager Training

This presentation will educate land managers about IMBA and the practice of designing, building and maintaining sustainable purpose-built mountain bike trails as well as the importance of partnerships with local mountain biking organizations to achieve great trails. Topics of discussion will include:

March 28th 2 p.m. Virginia War Memorial 621 S Belvidere St., Richmond, VA 23220

Last week, on our Monday trail-related post, I wrote about the fundraising efforts underway to pay for the new mountain bike trails to be put in at Pocahontas State Park. The project, with 30 new miles of singletrack and a trailhead facility, could cost close to $1.5 million. The state put $50,000 toward the project last April and the Dominion Foundation added $50,000 of their own soon after. Much of the money will have to be raised from corporate donors and foundations, but there is a grassroots fundraising and get-the-word-out effort underway as well.

This Saturday, in the Carillon at Byrd Park, local mountain biking and trail building group Richmond MORE is hosting Trailicious 2 — “a celebration to benefit the Richmond Regional Ride Center.” (The “Richmond Regional Ride Center” is a designation the International Mountain Bicycling Association will bestow upon our area trails — the combination of the downtown trails and Pocahontas — once the new singletrack is in down in Chesterfield.)

Who doesn’t want more sweet singletrack like this? Credit: Jesse Peters

Brandy Adams, a driving force behind the event, said the original Trailicious was held back in 2010 when the North American Handmade Bicycle Show was in town and raised money for the trail work at Forest Hill Park. The goal of Trailicious 2 is partly to raise money but also to educate local trail users about the upcoming work at Pocahontas SP.

“I wasn’t sure what the ride center was myself,” she said. “I thought it was a building. I needed to be educated. That’s where we’re going to take care of some misperceptions.”

IMBA representative Rich Edwards will be on hand to help explain the ride center and the scoring system used to evaluate an area’s ride center status. And Harrisonburg MTB pro Jeremiah Bishop will be there to sign autographs and take questions before riding in Monster Cross the following day.

And, of course, there will be beer. Sierra Nevada is one of the sponsors, after all.

“Think of a carnival, like a festival kind of thing, ” Adams said.

The $20 entry fee gets you access to a raffle, two beer tickets, a live band, videos, games and more. That’s all inside the Carillon. Outside in the parking lot, there’ll also be a number of food truck options.

It’s all this Saturday, and you can’t buy tickets at the door. So, if you love Richmond’s trails, click here to attend Trailicious 2 ands support their continued excellence.

It’s trail update Monday here at RichmondOutside.com, and as usual there’s a lot going on that area mountain bikers, trail runners and other trail lovers should be aware of.

Jim Beamer (on left holding check) was among those at Pocahontas SP for the unveiling of Dominion’s gift. Credit: Phil Riggan

You probably remember back in April 2013 when the state through its budgeting process and the Dominion Foundation each put $50,000 on the table to support the expanding of the trail system in Pocahontas State Park. The gifts helped jumpstart a larger effort to designate the Richmond region (the downtown trails combined with the proposed Pocahontas singletrack) as an official International Mountain Bicycling Association “Ride Center.”

The effort was considered a legacy project of the world cycling championships that will arrive here in September 2015, something that will benefit the community — many communities, actually — long after the road races and tourists are gone.

At the time, estimates for the Pocahontas project — all the new trail as well as new trailhead facilities — ran close to $1.5 million. That’s a lot of money, and $100,000 is just a start, obviously. So last week I gave Dominion’s Jim Beamer a call to see how the fundraising was going. Beamer is a lobbyist for the energy behemoth and an avid cyclist. He, along with Richmond MORE’s Greg Rollins and Jason Eige, with Gov. McDonnell’s office, were the driving forces behind this project from the beginning.

Beamer said “things are going real well” overall with regards to the project. The original $100,000, he said, has allowed IMBA to send its trail builders out to Pocahontas to flag and lay out the future trails.

In terms of fundraising, he added, “things are going far better than I ever thought they would. We’re teeing up to hopefully keep the cash coming in.

Riders hit the trails at Pocahontas State Park. Credit: Phil Riggan

“Before you go out and start putting the ask on people for this kind of a big donation, you have to put all the pieces and parts together for what we’re selling. I think we’re at that point now that we can tell the story of what we’re going to achieve, how we’re going to do it, the timeline we need the cash to come in. We can go out and tell a compelling story of how this is going to be a legacy project of Richmond 2015.”

Beamer said they’ve already got a $10,000 matching grant from the Virginia Tourism Corporation. And in the coming days and weeks, he, former State Parks Director Joe Elton and a couple of others will begin meeting with local foundations, charitable organizations and private donors to pitch the project.

“Just building trail will cost $750,000,” Beamer said. “So, we have about another $600,000 to go. But that hurdle is not that big.”

Look for announcements here at RichmondOutside.com as the donations come in for the project.

NEXT WEEK: The local mountain bike community comes together on Feb. 22 together to do a little ride center fundraising of its own at Trailicious 2.

This here is Post No. 2 in our new weekly trail update series. Every Monday we’ll report on a local trail project –past, present, or upcoming. Considering how many people use the trails in our fair city — dog walkers, runners, birders, mountain bikers, etc — we think there’s an appetite out there for trail knowledge.

The new bridge will span a drainage like this one.

This past week I spoke with a Richmond city employee who said the trail crew is waiting on the funding to come through for a new bridge in Powhite Park. (Some weeks its easier than others to get permission from the city parks department to quote their employees on the record. This was not an easy week. You’ll have to trust me that this source is qualified to comment on this. He’ll just have to remain nameless for this week.)

The area in question is where the trail runs through the northwest corner of the park, along the beaver-dammed, swampy section of Powhite Creek. It’s constantly muddy and has entrances and exits that don’t lend themselves to good.

The park employee said they’ll re-route the trail up the slope of the hill just a few feet, but that will mean putting it across a small drainage — thus the need for the bridge. He said thinks it’ll cost around $750 and hopes to have it done by the end of February.

Typical Powhite Park trail.

If you’ve been out to Powhite Park in past year or two, you’ve probably seen that some significant trail work has already taken place in the park. But it’s a big place — around 100 acres — so plenty more could  — and will — be done in the future.

Next Monday: A roundup of upgrades made to the James River Park System trails this winter.

Big news for Richmond and off-road triathletes nationwide came out of U.S.A. Triathlon today. The sport’s governing body in America announced that the Richmond XTERRA East Championships off-road triathlon will double as the USAT’s Off-Road Nationals as well.

Conrad Stoltz runs the “dry way” during XTERRA Richmond. Credit: Conrad Stoltz

“That means racers who win their division (in Richmond) will be named USAT Off-Road National Champ, XTERRA East Champ, and earn qualifying spots to both the 2014 XTERRA World Championship AND the 2015 ITU Cross Triathlon World Championship,” said Trey Garman, XTERRA’s vice president for marketing and media relations. “Big Haul! Expect a strong field in Richmond this year!”

According to the press release from the USAT: Off-Road Nationals will be held at XTERRA Richmond on June 15. The course has been part of the XTERRA circuit since 1998, and the River City is a premier destination for off-road racing adventures. Beginning at James River, the 1000-meter swim, 32-kilometer mountain bike, 10-kilometer trail run event also serves as the XTERRA East Championship.

In addition to chasing national titles in Richmond, athletes also will be competing for prized spots on Team USA for the 2015 International Triathlon Union (ITU) Cross Triathlon World Championships, the date and location of which will be announced later this year by ITU. The top 18 finishers (rolling down to 25th place) in each age group will qualify for a Team USA slot. Team USA is composed of amateur athletes who represent the U.S. at each ITU World Championship event.

Registration for 2014 USA Triathlon Off-Road Nationals is currently open, and an early-bird rate of $75 is available until Feb. 15. Click here to register for this event, and visit usatriathlon.org/offroadnationals for more information.

Richmond’s downtown trail system is one of the features that sets the city apart as an outdoors destination. I’d put it right up there with the rapids in the Falls of the James. They’re an amenity that very few cities have. So, with that in mind, we’re launching a weekly trail update on our news blog here.

Every Monday, we’ll bring you news from the trail: What’s being worked on? Where are re-routes planned? What park needs a trail makeover? What volunteer events are coming up? Etc. Whether you’re a hiker, mountain biker, birder, trail runner, dog walker, geocacher or just general trail lover, if you use Richmond’s trails, this will be the place and time to find out what’s going on.

The gravel piled up waiting to be spread. Credit: Enrichmond Foundation

This week I spoke with Mike Burton, Trails Manager for the city. I was out riding the mountain bike on Saturday and saw him loading gravel into a truck below the Manchester Bridge on the Floodwall. He said he was preparing for today’s volunteer event organized by the Enrichmond Foundation. Twenty-five volunteers from HandsOn Greater Richmond arrived to help spread the gravel that Burton was piling up over the weekend.

“As you get further down toward the Floodwall tower,” Burton said, “that always gets really muddy, so we’re adding more gravel and grading it out.”

It was all part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and the work looks great. If you’ve never been to the Floodwall, go check out one of the coolest views of downtown in the city.

Volunteers hard at work. Credit: Phil Riggan

Next week’s trail update:  A new bridge is in the works for Powhite Park. Where’s it going in, and when can we expect to see it?