CicLAvia articles at Brand X and L.A. Streetsblog

What ciclovia could look like on Vermont Avenue

Continuing the media frenzy that is CicLAvia, this week the L.A. ciclovia campaign saw press at Brand X and at L.A. Streetsblog.

On Wednesday November 18th, Brand X, the L.A. Times’ successful version of a hip alternative free paper, featured a story by Matthew Fleisher entitled Giving cars the weekend off in Los Angeles.  It’s pretty much the same article that we excerpted here. (Joe’s editorial note to the L.A. Times family of publications: please don’t feel that you always have to include cars in your titles for ciclovia coverage. Last time it was “…bicyclists in the driver’s seat…” How about something like “imagine Los Angeles streets filled with bicycles and pedestrians”? catchy, no?)

L.A. Streetsblog is a phenomenal local resource for angelenos interested in local transportation and public space issues. Want to know what’s going on with bicycling? walking? rail lines? bus rapid transit? parking? sprawl? global warming? Tune your RSS to L.A. Streetsblog. Also, check out their affiliates at Streetfilms (watch footage of what ciclovias really look like) and Streetswiki.

L.A. Streetsblog has run a few articles about CicLAvia earlier. Damien Newton’s article there yesterday was entitled Welcome to the Blogroll: CicLAvia and City of Lights. It includes coverage of the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition’s innovative City of Lights program to foster safe riding for immigrant cyclists. Regarding cicLAvia, here’s what L.A. Streetsblog had to say:

CicLAvia is also using a blog to update interested parties on their work.  Following their star-turn in the Times and on television, CicLAvia posted a “what is CicLAvia” post to make sure anyone interested knew who and what the campaign is.  They also have picked up a Streetsblog theme by looking at major street parties, in this instance the Gold Line Eastside Extension Opening, and asking why we need excuses to have street parties.  Isn’t living in Los Angeles enough?

Thanks for the coverage, Brand X and L.A. Streetblog, and welcome to our new readers!

Welcome to the Blogroll: CicLAvia and City of Lights

East Hollywood to Boyle Heights Concept

Since we have more momentum going forward, I though this would be a good time to start thinking about actual routes. I know that we have strong support in East Hollywood, and we have some support in Boyle Heights, so I put together a route concept that connects these neighborhoods through MacArthur Park and downtown. This route comes to 12.6 miles total, which is a respectable length. This route provides very good connectivity with the Red, Blue, and Gold lines, so it would be very easy to get to and from the cicLAvia route.
This is just my idea (Bobby’s) of a route, and nothing official, so this is just something to think about. What do you guys think of this route? Anything that you would change?

View Larger Map

Another more general question is how long should the first cicLAvia be? Bogota’s Ciclovia is 80 miles, but many of the pilot ciclovia projects in the US have been much shorter. I am of the opinion it should be at least 10 miles to be a “real” ciclovia, but some think we should start with a shorter one that is more logistically feasible and build from there. What do you think?

LA Loves a Street Party

This Sunday we headed to the celebration marking the opening of the new Gold Line extension in East LA. Since the event at Mariachi Plaza involved a closed street, we got to see throngs of people in the road. That’s a nice sight!

Hundreds crowded 1st Street, which was closed for the celebration.

People know what to do if there’s an event in the street: they go out and join in.

But what if there is no specific attraction in the street?

No crowds just a block away from Mariachi Plaza.

Just a short distance from the Boyle Heights Block Party, people walked along the sidewalk of closed 1st Street, staying out of the four closed lanes that yawned across the empty street.

Angelenos know how to have a good street party, as our many festivals show, but do we know how to expand onto our streets when they are opened to us?

cicLAvia will feature many performances and activities, just to be sure that people have something to do. And then maybe, after a while, they will start to wander from one lane to the next, feeling the freedom to move through the large spaces we give over to traffic the rest of the week.

Besides, there will be so many people enjoying themselves that they’re going to spill off our narrow sidewalks anyway!

What is cicLAvia?

The last week or so we at the cicLAvia committee have been a little overwhelmed by the recent media firestorm. The LA Times article from last week touched off a lot of blog coverage, and the ABC TV spot got us some more mainstream coverage. However, most of the coverage has focused on the bike aspect of cicLAvia, and not the pedestrian, community building aspect. We realized we need to have some details up here about what we are planning to do and what cicLAvia is. Also, we have had a lot of inquiries as to how people can help with this effort, so this should give you some idea of where we are now and what kind of help we need.

The story begins 30 years ago in Bogotá, Colombia. Back then, activists and city officials were struggling with overwhelming car traffic and unsafe spaces for pedestrians and bicyclists. Jaime Ortiz and other activists and city offiicials in Bogotá planned an event called the Ciclovía (bike-way). They closed several major streets to cars, and opened them to people. Families promenaded, bicyclists biked, and dog walkers dog-walked in the car-free streets. Eventually this event grew to a weekly street closure, every Sunday morning to early afternoon. This helped change the city from a traffic-choked mess to a more pedestrian and bike-friendly place. Furthermore, it helped foster a better sense of public space and civility.

This concept lately has spread to other cities in Colombia and across Latin America. Guadalajara, Mexico City, Quito, and many other cities hold regular ciclovías. Even more recently, cities in the United States have held pilot ciclovía-like events. New York’s Summer Streets, San Francisco’s Sunday Streets, and Chicago’s Open Streets have all been big hits. This is a really hot idea in progressive transportation and open space policy circles right now.

In October 2008 a small group of pedestrian, bicycle and open space activists were inspired by the Ciclovía idea and started a committee to work on getting this started in Los Angeles. We started preliminary planning and outreach, and decided to name the Los Angeles version of this event cicLAvia (Bringing Ciclovía to LA). Luckily, we have a fantastic graphic designer on board and developed a graphic identity for cicLAvia.

We presented at the Bike Summit in March 2009, where we gained more support and made some contacts with city council officials. We continued to work on developing materials and plans.

More recently the LAPD put on the MacArthur Park Bike Expo, which was a mini, one-block cicLAvia. We coordinated with LAPD to have a booth there to do outreach and get more public support for a full-scale cicLAvia.

We have presented at various events around LA and garnered a lot of support. Recently we had a meeting with the Mayor’s office where city officials expressed initial support for a pilot cicLAvia project. They recommended that we start with a smaller-scale cicLAvia in a neighborhood with lots of community support, to make sure that the first event is a smashing success. We understand that community, grass-roots support for the project is key.

With this in mind we have recently approached the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council (EHNC) since it is one of the most pedestrian and bike-friendly Neighborhood Councils around. (They had the most rockin’ Park(ing) Day event!) Tonight the EHNC officially endorsed the cicLAvia in East Hollywood, with a possible collaboration with Artcycle in mind. We are also in the process of planning public scoping/planning meetings, so that the residents of East Hollywood can tell us where they think the best route would be.

The future for cicLAvia is bright, and it will happen this spring, the only question is how big will it be!

CicLAvia Coverage on ABC TV

Check out the excellent ciclovia coverage this week from KABC TV entitled “Project would shut streets for bicyclists.”

KABC Ciclovia Coverage

Click on the image or this link to watch the 2-minute video.

CicLAvia in the L.A. Times

Imagine what a ciclovia on Sunset Boulevard might look like!

Today’s Los Angeles Times features an article about bringing ciclovia to Los Angeles! It’s by Matthew Fleischer and it’s titled Imagine: L.A. bicyclists in the driver’s seat, one day a week.

Below are two brief excerpts, click here for the full article:

Imagine Los Angeles without cars. A town where people ride their bikes and walk in the streets and the smells of tacos and veggie burgers drift through the air instead of exhaust.

Sound like a pipe dream? Not if a group called cicLAvia is successful. A volunteer coalition of bicycle advocates, transportation experts, artists and academics, cicLAvia wants to make Sundays in Los Angeles virtually car-free — transforming the city’s streets into giant bike lanes and creating a public space that connects every neighborhood in the city.

and

“We’re excited by the [ciclovia] idea and we’re looking for ways to support it,” says Romel Pascual, L.A.’s associate director of energy and the environment. “Making events like this happen is always in the details — what neighborhoods to start with, the routes involved. But it’s definitely something we’re looking to explore in 2010.”

Read the rest here. For more images of what an L.A. Ciclovia might look like go here.

Retractable Bollards for Ongoing Ciclovias

Retractable bollards in Long Beach - they're the small circular things to the left of the nearside line of the crosswalk stripe. Photo by Joe Linton

The city of Long Beach has an ambitious agenda to become more bikeable and walkable. They’ve already implemented some excellent projects, and have more planned.

Here’s a project that has implications for hosting ciclovias. As part of a traffic calming and pedestrianization project in their downtown they’ve installed retractable bollards. The project is located at the corner of First and Linden. The bollards allow the city to exclude car traffic for that one-block area of the street for fairs, farmers markets, etc.

The bollard spend most of their time underground. There’s a little locking mechanism, so nobody can tamper with them unless they have a key. When the city wants to close the street to cars, it can extend the bollards. Traffic control officers may not like this next statement, but this allows for reduced cost street closures, because instead of paying officers to person these closures, the city can merely put up the bollards.

Imagine, if a city has a permanent route for regular ongoing weekly ciclovias, then it might keep event costs minimal by installing bollards like this at each intersection.

Manual Para Crear Ciclovias

From Bogotá, Colombia, here’s a website on how to plan, run and promote a ciclovía. It’s all en Español, por supuesto, pero hay plenty of good photographs for los persons who can’t read Spanish that well.

Screen capture of ciclovia website homepage

A brief excerpt from the home page:

La Ciclovía Recreativa es un programa que consiste en el cierre temporal de calles para el tráfico motorizado, con el fin de crear un espacio seguro y agradable donde las personas puedan pasear, trotar, patinar, correr, caminar y montar en bicicleta. Los gobiernos de las ciudades, así como los formuladores de políticas públicas, pueden encontrar en la Ciclovía un programa para promover la actividad física y recreación en sus comunidades.

cicLAvia Gets Attention at “An Evening with David Byrne”

On Friday, October 2, about six hundred people gathered at the Aratani/ Japan America Theatre in Little Tokyo to hear a panel of experts speak about bicycling in Los Angeles. The reason for the occasion was musician/ filmmaker/ artist/ bicyclist David Byrne, who is currently touring to promote his new book, Bicycle Diaries.

Joining him up on stage were Jimmy Lizama, a co-founder of the Bicycle Kitchen, Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor and the author of the influential book The High Cost of Free Parking, and Michelle Mowery, senior bicycle coordinator at LADOT.

The cicLAvia team showed up early to do some hobnobbing, and as our table attracted interested attendants we told many people about our plans. (Guess what, they liked the idea!)

After the four panelists gave their engaging presentations, cicLAvia supporter Aaron Paley of CARS-LA brought up the topic of ciclovías. Byrne and Lizama are big fans, and Mowery mentioned that there is interest in planning one at LADOT, but they just don’t have any funding. Imagine her surprise when Aaron announced that a certain foundation is willing to back our efforts with a generous donation!

“We should schedule a meeting,” Mowery replied.

A good night for cicLAvia, to be sure!

Streetfilms Coverage of Ciclovias in SF and NYC

NYC's 2009 Summer Streets (Photo: StreetFilms)

The website StreetFilms has some excellent new short documentaries about recent ciclovias. In the summer of 2009, both San Francisco and New York City held multiple montly ciclovia events. San Francisco calls them “Sunday Streets” and New York City calls them “Summer Streets”. Folks interested in Ciclovias should also check out the excellent Streetfilm documentary exploring ciclovias where they got started in Bogota, Colombia.

(I tried to embed these videos here, but it didn’t seem to work… if anyone has advice on embedding StreetFilm videos into wordpress, please let me know.)