The Five Boro Bike Tour, sponsored by TD Bank beginning in 2014, is an annual recreational cycling event in New York City. It is produced by Bike New York. Conducted on the first Sunday of May, the 40-mile (64 km) ride includes over 30,000 riders. The route takes riders through all five of New York's boroughs and across five major bridges. The entire route, including bridges and expressways which normally prohibit cyclists, is closed to automobile traffic for the ride.
The event began on June 12, 1977 as the Five Boro Challenge with about 250 participants on an 80-mile course.
Then New York City Mayor Ed Koch promoted the idea of a citywide bike tour and the distance was shortened.
From 1979 to 1990, Citibank was the primary sponsor of the event. In 1991 the tour was cancelled due to monetary problems, but returned in 1992. TD Bank bought naming rights to the tour. In 2013 the City proposed to charge the Tour nearly a million dollars for police services.
The Tour had been managed by the New York Council of American Youth Hostels (AYH), for many years by tour director Paul Sullivan, who died in 1999. That same year, AYH spun off the event into a new nonprofit called Bike New York.
The route begins in Lower Manhattan, heads north via Sixth Avenue through the interior of Central Park and continues into Harlem and the Bronx via the Madison Avenue Bridge. Re-entering Manhattan, it travels south along the East River on the FDR Drive. The route crosses the Queensboro Bridge into Queens before heading south across the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Staten Island.
Many people rent bikes in order to participate in the ride. There are several local bike shops that rent bikes in NYC. Bike and Roll NYC is the official bike rental operator for Bike NY, the event producer.
The next Five Boro Bike Tour is scheduled for May 6, 2018.
Video Five Boro Bike Tour
References
Maps Five Boro Bike Tour
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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