RTC to connect bike event to trade show

By Kyle B. Hansen

Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 | 5 p.m.

For many of the thousands of people who come to Las Vegas for trade shows each year, the city is little more than the Strip and the airport. Some of them never see the rest of Southern Nevada.

But the Regional Transportation Commission has a plan to try to keep some bike enthusiasts in town a little longer for a tour of some of the region’s finest sites.

About 24,000 people are in Las Vegas for Interbike, a trade show for the bicycle industry, at the Sands Expo Center.

The annual event already includes an outdoor demonstration in Bootleg Canyon in Boulder City, but the RTC decided it needed to get more of those people to participate in Viva Bike Vegas, its annual bike tour, which includes 103-, 60- and 17-mile courses.

At this year’s event, to be held Oct. 15, all three routes will include a ride on the Strip, which will briefly be closed to automobiles. The longer route also includes a visit to Red Rock Canyon and Lake Mead.

Next year, the event will be moved up to Sept. 22 to coincide with the Interbike conference.

The hope is that people attending the conference will decide to stay in Las Vegas for a couple of extra days and get off the Strip to see the rest of the city, RTC General Manager Jacob Snow said.

“We hope to be able to take our participation from 2,000 to eventually 20,000,” Snow said, suggesting that some day most of the Interbike attendees will stay for the bike ride.

The commission also added the words “Gran Fondo” to the title of the event. The Viva Bike Vegas Gran Fondo won’t be different than this year’s Viva Bike Vegas, but the words add the Italian term for a long bike ride to the name to better explain the event to cycling enthusiasts.

Many of the bike convention attendees are the type of people who like to get out of convention centers and see the sites, said Andy Clark, the president of the League of American Bicyclists.

“You can sense that people would want to get out and ride,” he said. “I think they’re going to jump at the opportunity to stay and ride the event.”

It will also be a chance for some of the 1,200 cycling brands and 4,000 retail stores that present at the event to showcase their products at an actual bike ride, said Pat Hus, the managing director of Interbike.

“Why not take advantage of all the people here in town already?” he said.

The RTC is offering a discount for Interbike attendees this year to register for the Viva Bike Vegas event, either for this year or next.

Also at the convention today, the RTC was recognized as the first business in Nevada to receive the Bicycle Friendly Business award from the League of American Bicyclists.

The RTC received the silver level of the award, so it still has some room to improve before it gets to the gold or platinum levels, but has shown a wonderful commitment to encouraging people to ride their bikes to work, Clark said.

About 500 businesses in the nation have applied for the award and about 350 have received it, Clark said.

Washoe County recently was recognized as the first place in Nevada to receive the Bicycle Friendly Community award, he said, “So there’s some competition.”