The big 10th Anniversary Jersey City Ward Tour will take place on Sunday, June 2nd, 2019, at 11:00am

2,000 Bikes. 15 or 25 Miles. 6 Wards. 1 Great Day in #JerseyCity! (with a side of Bayonne & Hoboken!)

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN!!

Bike JC’s 10th Annual Jersey City Ward Tour will roll Sunday, June 2, taking you (and probably over 2,000 of our closest friends) on a tour of our great city, and passing through all of its political wards.

And this year, we’re offering a special route that will be longer (25 miles), will roll somewhat faster with fewer stops, and will loop through parts of our neighboring towns Bayonne and Hoboken!

FREE! $5 suggested donation to fund our year-round work for better biking in JC. But it is JUST a suggestion. $0 is totally OK. So is $500, or $5 million. :-)

We all start at City Hall, 280 Grove St. at Montgomery Street.

We all end up near the foot of Second Street along the Hudson River waterfront, in and around Lutze Biergarten. The Finish Line Festival afterparty will follow there, with great food, a drink special for riders all afternoon, a face painter for kids, and more!

We’ll ride on streets (or sometimes on one side of a street) that are closed to motor-vehicle traffic by the Jersey City Police Department. Officers on bikes and in motor vehicles will escort us throughout the ride.

Riders on the main 15-mile tour must be age 12 or older, and must wear helmets. (Younger children may be carried securely on an adult's bike in appropriate child seats, bakfiets buckets, trailers, tag-along attachments, etc.) Riders on the 25-mile route must be 16 or older.

All riders on the main 15-mile route must also be able to maintain a pace of approximately 10 mph. This is a fairly relaxed pace for an adult who bikes even occasionally. We also take some short breaks to catch a breath and to allow for smooth traffic control, and our one long break in Lincoln Park roughly at the halfway point, after the only steep uphill on the course (so you can just walk your bike up that hill if you want).

All riders on the 25-mile route must be able to maintain a somewhat faster pace, about 12 mph, obviously for longer, and must be ready to roll with fewer and shorter rest breaks. This is a new, one-time, more complex route that we are offering to celebrate our 10th Ward Tour and showcase the growing bike communities in our neighboring towns. But we will be especially strict about who does this route, for safety and logistics reasons.

Please note that neither route on the Ward Tour is timed, and it is not a race. In fact, we will strictly limit the front of the 15-mile group to 10 mph, and will slow down the 25-mile riders as needed to keep the back of that group from stretching out.

But we must also emphasize, for either route: YOU MUST BE ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH THE GROUP, OR WE WILL HAVE TO ASK YOU TO CUT YOUR RIDE SHORT, as police re-open the streets to motor traffic behind us. If you are in the 25-mile group, and you fall behind, marshals and police will stop you and you will have to wait for the slower 15-mile group.

Also note, if you can’t keep up, if your bike quits on you, or if you simply want to drop out along the way, we will TRY to help you, but ultimately YOU are responsible for getting yourself home if need be. We will have marshals and others with mechanical skills in the groups, and at least one van following the tour to pick up riders. But this is not always possible. If you need to go home, please ride according to all traffic laws. You may be able to catch a light rail or PATH train to shorten your trip home.

We strongly recommend that you and everyone in your party do a least some bike riding in the weeks before the tour. If you want to do the 25-mile route, that’s pretty much a requirement.

We do NOT rent or otherwise provide the bikes!

The 25-mile group rolls tour rolls out at 11 a.m. SHARP, and the 15-mile group rolls at 11:30 but you will need to pick up an official tour bib before the start, 9:00–10:30 a.m.

We encourage you to dress up yourself and your bike colorfully!

Bike JC is a citizen-based advocacy organization that aims to make Jersey City streets welcoming for bicyclists, by promoting bike-friendly policies, including bike lanes; bicycle education; and traffic law enforcement.

We hope to see you June 2! With protected bike lanes on the horizon, this is shaping up to be another banner year for biking in Jersey City. Come celebrate with us!

PLEASE NOTE: The Ward Tour & Festival is officially a RAIN OR SHINE event. There is NO rain date.

We will ride June 2 even if it’s raining, in any weather that’s not dangerous, or simply cancel till next year for any that is (e.g. lightning, hail, very high winds, plague of frogs …). There will be no refunds, because it’s free! But if you give us the suggested $5 donation (or $5 million or whatever), those are non-refundable. And thank you!!

MORE ABOUT THE FINISH LINE FESTIVAL:

ALL RIDERS, OF ALL AGES, and even people who AREN'T riding, are welcome to join us inside and around the beautiful Lutze Biergarten at the end of the Tour, for our Finish Line Festival.

The biergarten has a nice variety of food and drink for purchase; bring valid ID and get a bracelet from the staff if you want to buy adult beverages.

And we hear there's a special cocktail in the works for us too!

For the kids, in the biergarten's grass-covered picnic area, we'll have a face-painter working magic!

Local nonprofit groups and others will have tables outside the biergarten so you can get to know them if you'd like.

The Jersey City Ward Tour is presented by Bike JC in partnership with the the City of Jersey City, Mayor Steven M. Fulop, the Jersey City Municipal Council, and the Office of Cultural Affairs, and through the generosity of our sponsors and the efforts of our volunteers.

See you June 2!

#JCWardTour2019

Registration Page