Imagine: Los Angeles Without Cars

Image via Wikipedia

A little self-promotion here, but a recent story of mine in the L.A. Times profiles a group called cicLAvia that is trying to shut down the streets of L.A. on Sundays and turn them into giant bicycle lanes.

The idea, called a “ciclovia,” isn’t new. A phenomenon across Latin America, the ciclovia was born in the Colombian city of Bogota 30 years ago. Car-choked and polluted, Bogota’s geography and sprawl very much mirrors that of Los Angeles. But every Sunday in Bogota, the city’s major avenues are shut down to cars and hundreds of thousands of cyclists take to the streets. CicLAvia wants to replicate that success in Los Angeles – a city not exactly known for being bicycle-friendly.

“This city is so park poor, and so car dependent,” says cicLAvia member and director of the Green L.A. Institute Jonathan Parfrey. “Air pollution is awful and childhood obesity is epidemic. But building new parks for people to get out of their cars and exercise can be prohibitively expensive. We want to create public space using the infrastructure we already have – our roads.”

The great thing is, this idea actually has support from the Mayor’s office.

“We’re excited by the 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.”

Having recently returned from a trip to Bogota, I can personally speak to what a brilliant idea this is. Every Sunday, the streets of Bogota are transformed from traffic strewn parking lots, choked with diesel fumes, to giant city parks, with hundreds of thousands of people flooding the open space. It’s quite a site to behold.

There is absolutely no reason this couldn’t work in Los Angeles.