CicLAvia is Coming Back!

Image from CicLAvia. All Rights Reserved.

CicLAvia is coming back to Los Angeles in April.  After a hugely successful inaugural event, the bicycle and pedestrian-focused fete is going to be taking over Los Angeles streets again on April 10th.  Although the route of the event will be similar to the first, the hope is to expand the event with future dates planned for July and October.  The LA Times has more:

Last October, CicLAvia drew an estimated 100,000 pedestrians and bicyclists to a long stretch of city streets that were cordoned off to traffic. Now organizers say they are ready to do it again.

The next incarnation of CicLAvia will take place April 10, according to Aaron Paley, CicLAvia's producer and a member of its steering committee. He said its footprint will be similar to October's route, which zigzagged from East Hollywood through Westlake and into downtown and Boyle Heights.

Paley said the committee, a diverse collection of bike activists, transportation experts, academics, artists and event planners, plans to host two more events in 2011, in July and October, and would one day like to see a monthly CicLAvia in L.A.

"We have tremendous momentum," said Paley, who reported that city officials had approached the group after the first event to start planning the second. "There wasn’t any question of whether this was gonna happen again. It was just, 'How soon can we do it, and how high should we aim?' "

The concept of the ciclovia, which is Spanish for bicycle path, originated in Bogota, Colombia, three decades ago. Now each Sunday there, hundreds of thousands of people take to the temporarily car-free streets. Many other cities around the world, including New York, have hosted similar events.