Applications Open! Spring 2025 Bike Walk RVA Academy
When Bike Walk RVA launched its first Academy in 2014, the region had just 37 miles of bikeways and no plans focusing on bicyclist and pedestrian infrastructure. Since then, more than 200 Bike Walk “Champions” have graduated from the Academy. These community advocates, trained to stand up for connected biking and walking, helped to quadruple the region’s bikeway mileage, build key connectors like the T. Tyler Potterfield bicyclist/pedestrian-only bridge, and pass active transportation Master Plans in Richmond, Chesterfield, and Hanover. These master plans delineate strategy for increasing active transportation infrastructure, creating greater connectivity, and allocating more than $280 million to the regional Fall Line trail!
Our network of Champions helped make those wins happen – are you ready to help take the region even further?!
As a Bike Walk Champion, you will:
- receive hands-on training, skill-sharing, and team-building
- learn how to best advocate for funding, plans, and policies and development of bikeways, multi-use trails, and sidewalks
- learn how active transportation infrastructure is designed, funded, and built
- meet local elected officials and learn how to best interact with them
- develop a basic understanding of safe street design
- build social connections with other like-minded community members
More information about the format and curriculum of the Bike Walk RVA Academy can be found here.
Application schedule:
- January 7: Applications open (Use form below to apply. Acceptance is competitive.)
- January 22: Applications due by midnight
- January 29: Applicants notified by close of business
Weekday schedule (Wednesdays):
- February 19: First session (6 to 8 PM)
- February 26: Second session (6 to 8 PM)
- March 5: Third session (6 to 8 PM)
- *March 10: Fourth session (6 to 8 PM) *Class held on Monday for this week only.
- March 19: Fifth session (6 to 8 PM)
- March 26: Sixth and Final session + graduation (6 to 9pm)
Applications are used to gauge level of interest only.
Apply below.
Sports Backers is committed to creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture within Sports Backers programs and events in order to better inspire active living in the Richmond region.