ArroyoFest is a walk (or ride) on the wild side
110 Freeway from Pasadena to L.A. is closed to cars for pedestrians and cyclists
The 110 Freeway from Pasadena to Los Angeles was crowded Sunday morning, not with car traffic but rather with a steady flow of everything people-powered.
With participants riding bicycles, scooters, Rollerblades, skateboards or just putting one foot in front of the other walking or participating in the second annual Run the 110 race, more than 50,000 descended on the 6-mile closed-off stretch of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the 110 Freeway north of downtown Los Angeles to its end in Pasadena, just to experience Los Angeles' oldest freeway without cars from 7 a.m. to a little after 11 a.m.
It marked the second time in 20 years the same freeway was closed for ArroyoFest. The first time took place in June 2003, when two professors from Occidental College and several environmental and cycling groups pulled off the inaugural ArroyoFest, drawing about 8,000 people who traversed the lanes of the emptied freeway.
“A new generation will revive the magic,” said Tim Hepburn, mayor of La Verne and president of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments at the starting line of the second ArroyoFest on Mission Street and Orange Grove Avenue in South Pasadena.
Some walked the first Arroyofest with their young children who are now grown and experienced it a second time. Others came from all parts of Southern California to take part in the phenomenon.
“When you are driving it, you're going like 70mph,” said Heather Rothenay, 39 of Lake Elsinore. “Now it is cool to take it easy and see all the sites. You see the things you don't see (when driving).”
She's taken part in other open-streets events in San
Diego and Riverside.
Estaban Lopez, 52, who drives a truck for a living and lives in Highland Park, knows about hitting the Southern California freeways with his rig. (This stretch of the 110 Freeway is off-limits to commercial trucks). But even at home, the freeway sounds and particulate pollution intrudes, he said.
“We live right next to the freeway in Highland Park. Normally since 3:30 in the morning you hear the cars. Today, it is real quiet. It was like we were in the mountains,” said Lopez, who stopped for a break on the converted northbound lanes near York Boulevard after riding his fat-tire cruiser with his son, Sebastian, about four miles from Avenue 52 in Highland Park.
“The quietness made me get lost in the moment,” Lopez said.
Marcus Renner, a coorganizer of the first ArroyoFest, talked to the crowd about continuing the environmental theme, encouraging walkers, runners and bike riders to imagine those who came before them walking alongside them in spirit.
“I'm talking about the activists and advocates who 100 years ago fought to save the Arroyo, especially the women's groups from Pasadena and South Pasadena,” Renner said at the start of the event. He mentioned the Gabrielino and Tongva tribes who used the footpath through the canyon to travel to the San Gabriel mountains and “took care of this place for millennia.”
He envisions more freeway closures to bring added attention to the hillsides, the Arroyo Seco streambed, and the parks that dot the parkway that all could benefit from restoration.
“This is for all the people who dream of a better city with safe bikeways, public transit, parks and open spaces, walkable streets and affordable housing and a visible, diverse cultural heritage,” he concluded.
State Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, who also attended the first ArroyoFest, told the crowd of about 4,000 runners about to start the 10K race that kicked off the event that they, along with thousands of walkers were seeing life in L.A. from a smaller, human-powered scale.
“We should do this every five years, he said. “People can recapture the human spirit by using their feet.”
Famous long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, known for making a 102.5-mile swim from the
Show-offs at Sunday's ArroyoFest include a unicyclist and a bicyclist holding the handlebar with one hand and waving.
island of Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida in 1979, turned from swimmer to runner to walker. She spoke about enjoying nature while awaiting the call for walkers to join the emptied freeway lanes.
“It is like a transfer from the ocean to the blue sky of walking,” said Nyad, who lives in Hancock Park in Los Angeles.
For most, it came down to being in the moment.
One bike rider rode toward Fair Oaks Avenue
in a full-on skeleton costume. A couple dressed as Pokémon characters took a potty break, after first stripping off their wings. A young woman on roller skates clung to the guardrail in a slow descent onto the closed freeway.
Chris Nguyen and Hope Lavelle of Burbank were lacing up their white Rollerblades on the curb near the Orange Grove Avenue freeway entrance, getting ready to roll down the steep ramp and jettison onto the freeway lanes.
“How often do you skate on a parkway? It is such a rare opportunity,” Nguyen said.
Likewise, Nadine DeCarli parked her bike to have her picture taken next to the green 110 Freeway sign. “It is the oldest freeway in America. It is history,” she said, before jetting off.
Kay Lee of Pasadena stood on an overpass getting psyched up for her freeway walk as hundreds flowed by, talking and laughing.
“I like the sense of community. It brings everyone together, especially during these horrific times. You turn on the news and tears are running down your cheeks. Here, you see people smiling. Smiles are contagious,” she said.
ActiveSGV and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sponsored what some called a “CicLAvia on the freeway.” The 2003 ArroyoFest sparked the idea of letting people walk or ride bikes on streets emptied of all cars seven years before the first CicLAvia was held on Oct. 10, 2010.
Six lanes and six miles of the curvy Arroyo Seco Parkway were closed to cars from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m Sunday. The freewayturned-open-streets event stretched from Glenarm Street in Pasadena to Avenue 26/Figueroa Street in Lincoln Heights.
Metro awarded ActiveSGV $496,000 to plan and pull off the second ArroyoFest, hoping that many will notice the A Line, formerly the Gold and L lines, along the 110 Freeway and even use it to get back from the hubs in the afternoon, after the freeway reopens to car traffic.
Not long after 11 a.m., CHP officers took to their car PA systems to gradually ask walkers, runners and cyclists to begin clearing, as car traffic would once again come back to the stretch.
A rare morning glimpse of an L.A. freeway without traffic had come to an end. The cars were coming back.