CicLAvia 2012: April 15th Route Announced
Cyclists ride the October 2011 CicLAvia route in MacArthur Park | Photo: cyan79 via KCET's Southern California Flickr pool
CicLAvia, the event that turns several miles of Los Angeles streets into temporary parks, will be back in 2012. Organizers today announced that the route for Sunday, April 15 will be the same as last October, covering a diverse slice of the city.
"We were looking to potentially expand to new areas," explains a blog post on CicLAvia's website, "We're also looking to maintain a fiscally-sustainable tradition... so we ended up going with just what's tried and true for now."
The 10.5-mile route goes between East Hollywood and Boyle Heights with spurs to El Pueblo and into the southern reaches of downtown. Some 130,000 people turned out to the event last October.
The second CicLAvia in 2012 will be held on Sunday, October 14th and organizers hope to announce an expansion, which could include extending further east to Boyle Heights' Mariachi Plaza, north of El Pueblo into Chinatown or Exposition Park in South L.A.
The idea behind CicLAvia comes from Ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia where 80 miles of streets are converted to car-free roads every week. While that's an ideal goal, organizer Joe Linton says CicLAvia can't afford that frequency. "In cities where it's successful, it's a city program," he told KCET. Similar events are organized by the cities of Portland (five events/year) and San Francisco (eight events/year).
But in 2013, L.A. County might see four CicLAvias, thanks to a grant from from the Department of Public Health that seeks finding the feasibility of hosting the event in the cities of Lynwood, South Gate, Pomona and San Fernando. And there's also talk within the cycling community that a similar open streets event may occur this September to go along with the 17th Pro Walk/Pro Bike Symposium, which is being held in bicycle-friendly Long Beach.
In the meantime, CicLAvia organizers are focusing on this April and first up is their free Valentine's Party.
