A big bike ride that raised some hackles at Port Moody city hall in 2023 raised more than $10,000 for SHARE Family and Community Services from this year’s edition.
The Tri-City Cycling Club’s (TCCC) annual invitational ride Sunday, Aug. 11, attracted 250 road cyclists from groups across Metro Vancouver.
They pedalled routes of varying distance that took the hardiest riders across the Tri-Cities, out to Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge, then back to Anmore and Belcarra before ending at a giant picnic at Rocky Point Park in Port Moody.
Organizer Adrian Pettyfer said the event, that started in 2018 as an informal gathering of about 16 cyclists, is a chance for local riders to show off their favourite routes and terrain to cyclists who may not frequent the Tri-Cities. Each participant pays a $30 registration fee that is donated to SHARE.
But, in 2023, the ride was almost run into a ditch when the City of Port Moody deemed the event required a highway use permit as well as a certificate of insurance because, the city’s engineering department said, it required “partial closure” of roads as the peloton would be “disrupting vehicle traffic.”
Pettyfer said while TCCC already has insurance through Cycling BC, as do all individual cyclists who belong to a club sanctioned by the provincial organization, the requirement for highway use permits would have introduced an unexpected complication and expense that would have eaten into the ride’s charitable intentions. He said the annual invitational ride is not much different than the group’s regular weekly outings where the peloton departs in smaller groups at staggered intervals, everyone follows the rules of the road to minimize their impact on motorists and no closures have ever been required.
Pettyfer said the invitational ride isn’t a Fondo, a mass participation ride where cyclists depart in large groups and often stay bunched together along a controlled route that is at least partially closed to vehicles.
“If we were planning a mass start ride such as a Fondo, we can see the value in a permit to have roads closed and traffic detours,” Pettyfer said.
But after a specially convened meeting of councillors just days before the 2023 ride, the city relented.
Jeff Moi. Port Moody’s general manager of engineering and operations, said the permitting system is really intended to regulate construction projects where a roadway or lane might be blocked by equipment for a period of time.
He said the city would streamline its system to create exceptions for cycling or running events that benefit a charitable cause.
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