In the fall of 2020, if all goes as planned, the 110 Freeway will be shut down from just east of the 5 Freeway to its terminus near Pasadena for people to walk, bike, and move around—without cars—for an afternoon.
”We love working on projects that are ambitious, engaging, and inviting to the public,” Wesley Reutimann, the special programs director of Active San Gabriel Valley, the organization that’s putting together the event.
As wild as the idea may seem, Arroyo Fest has been done before. An event of the same name took place in the summer of 2003.
Active SGV staffers recently connected with a couple of the organizers of the original 2003 Arroyo Fest—both of whom were working at Occidental College’s Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at the time—and are looking forward to learning the ins and outs of how they pulled it off, especially without major sponsors. (The primary funder of the 2020 Arroyo Fest is Metro’s Open Streets Competitive Grant Program, without which, Reutimann says, the event wouldn’t be possible.)
“The first Arroyo Fest was ahead of its time,” says Reutimann.
Active SGV has organized two similar events to date, including one that spanned more than 17 sweaty, fun miles and crossed through eight different cities. The group will host two more events before Arroyo Fest.
Surprisingly, Reutimann says, he expects the 110 Freeway-traversing route to be easier to produce than the 17-mile-long one. It requires coordination with fewer cities, and the freeway is easier to secure for participants than city streets, he says says.
This section of the 110 Freeway, called the Arroyo Seco Parkway, opened in 1940 and is a nationally recognized landmark and a state scenic highway. But most people don’t get to enjoy the view or mull over the history when they’re driving on it, as the shockingly short on- and offramps demand undivided attention.
Those who take the Metro Gold Line, which runs along the parkway section and crosses it three times, get a few glimpses, but not much more.
By closing the historic stretch to cars and inviting people onto it, Angelenos will be free to look around, enjoy the scenery, and generally see this roadway in a different light. Active SGV wants that new point of view to get people interested in and excited about moving around the city without a car.
“For us, it’s about introducing people to different modes of mobility, promoting zero emissions, and active and public transportation,” says Reutimann, who points out that the Gold Line is going to be a major element of this route as well. (It opened about a month after the 2003 Arroyo Fest.)
The roughly 7-mile Arroyo Fest 2020 is slated for November 15, 2020. “Save the date!” Reutimann says.
Comments
This is so dumb.
By not banksy on 09.18.19 5:35pm
This sounds like a good idea. Said no-one ever.
By Joël Huxtable on 09.18.19 6:53pm
Looks like an awful lot of people enjoying their day in the picture above.
By corner soul on 09.19.19 1:40pm
This rules.
By Partymuscles on 09.18.19 7:20pm
This is GREAT! Love it! Power to the People.
I Love LA!
By I_Love_LA on 09.18.19 8:11pm
Of course the poor and dumb like this event
By Millennials Are Useless on 09.21.19 8:47am
This user has been flagged for being a bot. Please disregard all comments from this user, as a normal human would not doggedly attempt to sow such discontent.
If the user feels this has been made in error, they can correct this labeling by not wasting everyone’s time with their inane opinions.
By beowolfey on 09.23.19 1:10pm
Which stupid person thought this one up?
By myislandXP on 09.18.19 8:31pm
Which HP gentrifier came up with this brilliant idea?
By angelenonative on 09.18.19 11:04pm
Hyde Park gentrifiers?
Highland Park is HLP.
And it’s been done 16 years ago…before gentrification.
By saltmine on 09.19.19 3:24pm
You’ll need to go back 20 years if you think that was BEFORE gentrification in Highland Park
By Millennials Are Useless on 09.21.19 8:54am
You really think HLP was gentrified in 2003? Home values didn’t start to rise there until the late 2000s.
By saltmine on 09.23.19 1:42pm
By 2003 it was already "discovered" with early gentrifiers
By Millennials Are Useless on 09.24.19 4:44pm
Hate to say it, but he’s right. My RE biz friends were all in on Highland Park in 2000.
By LosFeliz$ean on 09.26.19 10:19am
This will end well.
By Plague on 09.19.19 8:37am
How are you getting there? I’m driving.
By LADude on 09.19.19 10:01am
There’s literally 5 Gold Line Stations there.
By yiptastico on 09.19.19 2:28pm
And thousands of people live close enough to walk even.
By corner soul on 09.19.19 4:36pm
And yet, everyone will still drive there. They keep building metro lines and ridership keeps declining. Because no one wants to use public transportation when they can use a car.
By LADude on 09.20.19 12:45pm
LOL at people flipping their wigs at literally one half of one day where cars aren’t allowed to go to a tiny slice of the endless expanse of roadways in the city. It’s amazingly quiet, peaceful, and pleasant to attend these kinds of things, like CivicLA, where the streets are free of cars. Hell, that was the one big upside of Trump’s recent visit, the two block radius around the Wilshire Grand being completely blocked off from car traffic. Quietest day in DTLA I’ve ever experienced in my life.
By disqusted on 09.19.19 3:14pm
I actually heard birds chirping in the trees on 8th and Figueroa around 5 PM! It was SO QUIET.
By astroland on 09.19.19 6:36pm
Time to finish what Horace Dobbins started in 1900 with the opening of the California Cycleway.
By Eric C Brightwell on 09.19.19 4:33pm
Yes!!!! Build the cycleway!
By Sarah Scoot on 09.22.19 8:15pm
I’M BRINGING MY ROLLERBLADES!
By Goldi on 09.19.19 6:06pm
Foot-races and bicycle races shutting down city streets.
Fourth of July parades in Pacific Palisades that cut off much of the city’s route to the ocean.
And now this.
If there’s one thing the people who run Los Angeles seem to love or, at least, are left oblivious to the consequences, it’s granting a benefit to a relative handful at the cost of inconveniencing tens of thousands.
Do we need any more proof that Los Angeles is the worst-run big city in America?
And it is the worst-run big city in America because the idiots who run it keep getting elected by the idiots who vote in the worst-run big city in America who are, apparently, blithely unaware that things here don’t have to be like this, and that this city should, and can, be run much, much more efficiently and beneficently.
By A.L. Hern on 09.20.19 5:43am