TIP! Ride a bus to the worlds

And do it without constantly laying down cash or card. One pass moves your ass (free tagline, GRTC!).

September 16, 2015; 7:00 AM • by Ross Catrow

If the thought of trying to plow your car through the miles and miles of road closures and cyclists due to the Big Bike Race™ makes your skin crawl and your clutch foot twitch, why not take the bus? For a limited time, GRTC is offering a $35 unlimited pass valid from September 18th – 28th.

You’d need to take about 23 trips¹ over the course of the ten days to “get your money’s worth,” but I think that’s a bad way to look at these unlimited fare cards. Since you don’t need to carry around a bunch of cash and you don’t need to worry about mentally calculating a growing stack of bus fares, you’ll be more likely to actually see a bus and just take it.

Here are the details you need to know:

You can purchase up a pass online and they’ll mail it to you. During the race, you can grab one at the transfer plaza or convention center.
You can use this pass to get up to Kings Dominion (normally a $5 fare). HOWEVER! That bus does not run on Wednesday, September 23rd, which is the day that Kings Dominion hosts the start of the Men’s Elite Individual Time Trial and opens some of their rides for free.
Even the mighty bus isn’t invulnerable to the realities of Big Bike Race™ road closures. You’ll want to check the detours and affected routes.

Fill out my online form.

Another way to think about it: slightly more than one trip out and one trip back each day of the Big Bike Race™. And if you count any transfers on your route, you’d have to take even fewer rides to make it pay for itself! ↩