BikePortland
First Ciclovia in North America is a Huge Success!
Thousands of Portland-area residents walked, biked, ran and Rollerbladed through six miles of North Portland streets Sunday, freed by an experiment that closed off the streets to car traffic for six hours.
Like a chain of neighborhood block parties, city organizers banned cars from a loop of streets and scheduled hours of music, food, dance lessons and other activities at parks along the route.
A first for Portland, the event was a huge draw for families -- some looking to gain confidence in riding bicycles and others just looking to get out and enjoy an early summer day. Enthusiasm and smiles abounded, even as cyclists hit the brakes to navigate around one other.
Oregonian
New York plans their first Ciclovia - WSJ
San Francisco does too - Examiner
1 comment:
Nice to see this starting in the US! I've been in Bogota and witnessed their Ciclovia first hand and it's a sight to behold. We even got a welcoming hello in English by a man on a bike, holding a tennis racquet in one hand and steering with the other, while we walked down a major street.
I noticed one hurdle mentioned in the article was the cost of hiring police for traffic control. Not sure if this is feasible, but in Bogota most of the traffic control duties were done by volunteers. I think the police patrolled the major intersections, but the side streets were done by citizens with vests and holding hand held stops signs, which I assumed were volunteers.
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