What do more than 80 North American cities now have in common with Bogotá, Colombia? They all offer regularly scheduled ciclovia (“bike path”) events that draw thousands of pedestrians and cyclists to enjoy car-free streets. Los Angeles (CicLAvia), San Francisco (Sunday Streets), Chicago (Open Streets Chicago), Minneapolis (Open Streets Minneapolis), Atlanta (Atlanta Streets Alive), and Tucson (Cyclovia Tucson) offer some of the largest U.S. events. Bogotá has hosted the world’s largest ciclovia for more than 30 years, which now includes more than 70 miles of city streets every Sunday.
“Folks going down to Bogotá or to other cities in Latin America oftentimes stumbled upon these open-street events and asked around, ‘What’s going on here?’” explains Mike Samuelson, member services and Open Streets coordinator at the Alliance for Biking & Walking, a coalition of state and local advocacy groups. The Open Streets Project is a collaboration begun in 2011 between the alliance and the Street Plans Collaborative, an urban planning firm, to promote ciclovia-type events, collect case studies, and publish best practices. “They realized this is really a great activity to promote health, to promote civic engagement and civic pride, to promote biking and walking, to connect people to other neighborhoods in their city and to parks….They came back to their city in North America with the goal of starting a similar event here.”
Samuelson compares open streets to paved parks. Most ciclovia events, which are generally held on Sundays, feature activities ranging from simple hula hoops and jump ropes to having playground equipment and climbing walls brought in. Musical performances, exercise classes, sports clinics, and bike repair and safety stations are other common features.
Customized for Each City
“It’s very customizable for each city,” Samuelson says. “You may pass through a neighborhood and you may really want to highlight something about that neighborhood. And you can use the support and activities to allow neighborhood groups to play music or hold a dance recital that highlights what’s really special about that one neighborhood.”
Starting in, ending at, or connecting between parks often makes for a natural ciclovia route. Portland, Oregon’s Sunday Parkways began in 2005 with parks used to anchor the routes, and each park hosted a vendor fair.
“What has evolved, and what we did with a quite specific intention, was to activate the parks with a healthier focus,” says Sue Glenn, zone services manager for North Portland at Portland Parks and Recreation. “We said we want these parks to be vibrant and active….We were missing an opportunity as park and recreation professionals—it’s called ‘Sunday Parkways’ and we needed to leverage exposure at these events that were garnering hundreds of thousands of visits.”
The vendors were eventually moved out of the parks and into the streets, leaving the parks free for healthy activities that often highlight offerings at nearby community centers. Although the five Sunday Parkways events each year are primarily organized by the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), the park department plays an integral role in offering activities such as Zumba, African dance, and obstacle courses. And the park department’s existing partnerships with businesses, nonprofits, and professional sports teams bring even more recreational activities such as a bike obstacle course, bike polo exhibitions, disc golf, and soccer clinics.
“I worked with my partners at PBOT to say, ‘Look, this is what we do. We have the experts who can really activate the parks,’” Glenn says. “We were already bringing our climbing walls and supporting them in a lot of ways. We had a lot of the infrastructure from our movies in the park and our concerts, so we have stages and sound and those kinds of amenities that we brought to the table. We have community centers in every part of the city, and we can activate both kids and adults through our fitness instructors, mini-boot camps, obstacle courses, and mini-soccer.”
Good for Business
Open-street events also often serve to introduce or reintroduce citizens to the streets, parks, and local businesses in their own neighborhoods. Although businesses are sometimes initially wary of the street closures, Samuelson says that most soon learn to embrace ciclovia days, and in fact often become both vocal and financial supporters of open streets. Case studies have shown a boost to sales on event days, and that boost can persist for weeks or even months. In a study in St. Louis, 73 percent of Open Streets participants reported spending money at a restaurant or store during the event, and 68 percent became aware of a store or restaurant that was new to them.
“When you’re on a bicycle, it’s a different scale and a different speed,” Glenn agrees. “You’re noticing things in a different way.”
Ciclovias also introduce or reintroduce residents to biking and walking for transportation. Although Portland already enjoys a reputation as a bike-friendly city, Glenn notes that the target audience for Sunday Parkways is a bit different than the stereotypical young, hip bicycle commuter. The event exposes families and minority communities to existing bike routes and breaks down the barriers between neighborhoods.
“There are so many really positive, beneficial goals around the outreach piece and what it looks like to move people along that paradigm from, ‘Okay, I’m thinking about it—it would be kind of cool,’ and then giving them a really, really safe opportunity to explore their neighborhoods because everything is controlled and the streets are closed,” she says.
With many open-street events currently sponsored and organized by nonprofit organizations, Samuelson hopes more city governments will get officially involved. One area where city-run events have an advantage is in more realistic city staff and police requirements. Although to his knowledge there have never been any catastrophic incidents of cars driving through an event, many cities still require what he considers to be an excessive police presence at each intersection.
“When the city doesn’t have to pay for those people, they’re going to want to have as much protection as possible. Once they are on the hook for that financially, then they start to act more sensibly,” he says. “One person per intersection, with the assistance of one or two volunteers, is more than enough to keep everyone safe.”
And park and recreation departments in particular should consider coming aboard with ciclovia events, according to Glenn.
“In my professional opinion, if parks aren’t out there activating, someone else will be. And that may be your commercial fitness center or some other entity,” she says. “I think it’s a great marketing opportunity….We are the experts in those types of things, whether it’s activity for youth or fitness activities at our community centers. We should be the ones leading the way. It’s so community minded with so many alignments with our mission.”
Elizabeth Beardis Managing Editor of Parks & Recreation.