The DowntownDC BID won the Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s (WABA) Bicyclists’ Choice award Feb. 20 for the bike friendliest neighborhood or BID.
At the award ceremony, hosted by Washington City Paper’s “Gear Prudence” columnist Brian McEntee (known as @sharrowsDC) and sponsored by Port City Brewing Company, BID representatives accepted the people’s choice award and enjoyed an evening of celebrating the ways in which the Metro Washington region is a great place for cyclists.
For Bike Friendliest Neighborhood or BID, the DowntownDC BID was up against the NoMa and Crystal City BIDs and the entire county of Arlington, Va.
The DowntownDC BID, most recently through the Downtown ecoDistrict, has consistently worked to support bicycling as a sustainable form of transportation. At the end of 2015, the BID, along with the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) and other partners, will have nearly doubled the amount of bike parking in Downtown public spaces since 2012. That’s roughly 400 more places to safely park a bike. The BID has helped add in-street bike corrals throughout downtown as well as sidewalk parking. [Click here to watch how space for one car becomes bike parking for 10] This work is ongoing, with plans to install over 100 additional parking spaces this year.
The BID also advocates for safe bike lanes in Downtown and helped implement the 15th Street cycle track, the Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track and the M Street protected bike lane, which took home a WABA Bicyclists’ Choice award for the 2014 “Best New Bike Infrastructure in the District of Columbia.”
The DowntownDC BID has served as a pilot area in the D.C. region for many bike projects, from last year’s 15th Street cycle track solar pavement lighting project to Capital Bikeshare, the original system for which was piloted in the BID in Aug. 2008 as the first bikesharing system in North America.
Over 450 people voted in the WABA Bicyclists’ Choice awards. Other winners included District Taco (located in D.C., including Downtown at 1309 F Street NW, as well as in Virginia) as the Bike Friendliest Bar, Restaurant or Coffee Shop, and BicycleSPACE’s 7th Street Social as the Best Social Ride.
[Click here for a complete list of the 15 WABA Bicyclists’ Choice winners and the seven additional individuals and organizations WABA chose to honor.]