Wreck-Less and Car-Free
By Greenfield, John
Cities across the United States are creating more space for walking, running, and hiking by shutting down roads through parks and neighborhoods. If the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives gets its way, 2008 will be the year New York banishes motor vehicles from Central Park and Prospect Park all summer long.
Nowadays, cars are only allowed on the parks’ perimeter roads during weekday rush hours and the holiday shopping season. But the group argues speeding autos still threaten the safety and serenity of the intended users: pedestrians, cyclists, and others seeking a break from the city’s cacophony.
“These parks are the crown jewels of New York and, right now, car traffic dictates how and when people can use them,” says Transportation Alternatives spokesman Wiley Brown.
His group has collected some 100,000 signatures in support of its proposal for a car-free summer; the city’s new transportation commissioner says she is thinking it over. Assuming this pilot program is successful, Transportation Alternatives plans to push for banning autos altogether.
“There’s so little time left for cars already, it makes sense to just close the parks and be done with it,” says Brown. “We’ve reached a tipping point.”
A Cyclical Movement
New York’s proposal is part of a national trend to create safe, inviting places for exercise and relaxation by removing the sight, sound, smell, and danger of car traffic. Dozens of cities have recently moved to restrict auto access to parks and other public spaces, according to Ben Welle from the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence in Washington, D.C.
Others are planning ciclovia, or “bike path,” programs in which networks of streets are temporarily closed to driving and open for non-motorized play. Last summer El Paso, Texas, staged the first ciclovia in the United States, and now Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Portland, Ore., are working on similar events.
“Cities are beginning to reach a boiling point,” says Welle. “They realize that if all they do is plan around cars, they’re not going to be healthy places for people. The obesity crisis, global warming, and a migration of people back to the city are pushing this issue to the forefront.”
Residents want spaces that accommodate people rather than cars, Welle continues. “We’re trying to put forward the idea that closing roads can revitalize parks.”
But proposals for road closures often meet stiff resistance from motorists and residents of neighboring communities, who argue that traffic will become snarled, cars will be diverted onto residential streets, parking will suffer, and shops and museum will lose patrons.
In 2003, for example, the National Park Service proposed extending carfree hours on Beach Drive in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park to include weekday non-rush periods (it was already closed on weekends). Joggers and bicyclists were thrilled and the plan received overwhelming support at community meetings.
However, drivers and nearby residents rallied against the change, and local officials refused to back the plan. The park service abandoned the idea. “The commuters were able to garner more political support,” says park superintendent Adrienne Coleman. “There needs to be cooperation from the surrounding jurisdictions; otherwise it’s just not going to happen.”
Car-Free Facts
Despite worries from residents, studies have shown that park road closures do not contribute to congestion or parking problems. In San Francisco, a 2007 report commissioned by Mayor Gavin Newsom found that car-free Sundays on John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park, in place since the 1960s, double the number of visitors with little effect on the adjacent neighborhoods. Patronage of the park’s De Young Museum and local businesses actually increases on Sundays.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition used this study to successfully lobby for “Healthy Saturdays” last summer, ending seven years of debate on the subject. “Golden Gate Park is a retreat from urban pressures,” says the coalition’s Leah Shahum. “It needs to be a safe, welcoming place. We wanted Saturdays to look like Sundays.”
Transportation Alternatives’ Brown says the minimal effect park road closures have on congestion can be explained by what he calls “induced demand.” When you allow people to speed through parks, you give them an incentive to drive.
“Some people think traffic is like water: If you block it from one place, it will just go somewhere else,” says Brown. “We’ve found that this is not true.” Instead, when roads are closed, fewer people choose to drive, a phenomenon sometimes called “traffic evaporation.”
“I’m not really convinced,” says John Corlett of the American Automobile Association’s New York chapter. “Some of these advocacy groups have a resultsoriented approach: ‘Let’s achieve the objective and worry about the impact later.’” He says that AAA does not have a knee-jerk reaction against closing park roads and he has heard no complaints from motorists about Central Park.
But he argues there should be careful study before further closures take place. “The Department of Transportation moves cautiously and I know TA isn’t too happy with that, but I understand the DOT’s reasoning.”
Car-Free Culture Rises
If local authorities can be convinced, Boston may be the next big city to remove autos from parkland. Across the Charles River in Cambridge, a 1.6mile stretch of Memorial Drive along the north bank has been car-free on Sunday afternoons for more than 30 years. The resulting greenway is known as “Riverbend Park.”
In January, the Charles River Conservancy proposed opening a five- mile stretch of the westbound lane of Boston’s Storrow Drive, on the south bank of the river, to non-motorized uses on Sunday mornings. “We want to bring a sense of quietude to the river because right now it’s not as peaceful as it could be,” says the conservancy’s Nicole Brown.
Unlike Memorial, Storrow passes under the streets that intersect it. “The beauty of Storrow Drive,” Brown continues, “is you could get a vigorous, uninterrupted five-mile workout.”
She’s optimistic that the state Department of Conservation and Resources, which owns the road, will eventually support the plan. “Car-free days are hot topics,” she says. “But when we’ve explained the hours and [the fact] that people can still drive east into the city, people have generally gotten behind this.”
In Phoenix, the park and recreation department’s new “Silent Sundays” at South Mountain Park and Preserve ban autos from the road to the mountain’s summit once a month, all year long. “It’s a bigger success each time we do it,” says park supervisor Kirn Keith, adding that he’s received a lot of positive feedback via e-mail.
“Eighty percent of the messages are from road-bikers who use the road to get to the top of the mountain and like the fact they can relax and not worry about cars,” says Keith. “The other 20 percent are from hikers who appreciate the clean air and quiet.”
Embracing the Ciclowa Model
The ciclovia model, already common in Latin America and Europe, is the wave of the future for road closures in North American cities. Bogota, Colombia, pioneered the concept in the 1980s, creating a car-free street route where residents could not only run and bike but also push strollers, play Volleyball, skateboard, dance, do aerobics and yoga, or just hang out and enjoy the social environment.
Today, Bogata’s ciclovia takes place each Sunday on a 70-mile network, regularly drawing 1.5 million participants. Every Feb. 1 is Dia Sin Carro, or “CarFree Day,” when private autos are completely barred from the city.
Gil Penalosa, Bogota’s former park and recreation director and now executive director of the nonprofit Walk & Bike for Life, speaks passionately about how the ciclovia promotes health and a sense of community. “Ciclovia provides a wonderful opportunity to walk, bike, and socialize. It’s magical because all of the sudden you are invited to occupy a space where you are normally forbidden.”
Penalosa calls the event an “exercise in integration” that encourages folks from all walks of life to interact with people of different ages, backgrounds, and economic levels.
The ciclovia model is cheap and flexible, Penalosa says. “It doesn’t cost you one cent in capital investment. It can be as successful in huge cities as small towns. The main thing it requires is political will.”
He suggests that municipalities should try it out for a few consecutive Sundays to allow momentum and support to build. “The first Sunday is when people complain the most, the second goes a lot more smoothly, and the third is fantastic.”
Last year El Paso, a city with only about 25 percent of the green space of an average American town its size, became the first U.S. municipality to hold a ciclovia. Just across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, carfree days had been drawing 60,000 participants on Sundays.
“Because Juarez was so close to us, it wasn’t such a radical idea,” says event coordinator Shamori Whitt, who is also open space coordinator for the El Paso Parks and Recreation Department. “Sixty- eight percent of the women and 78 percent of the men in El Paso are overweight, and 10 percent of the population has diabetes. You can’t really argue with those numbers.”
The city was able to raise $100,000 in contributions, which was used mainly to pay police to manage intersections so the ciclovia would not affect cross traffic. The event took place every Sunday in May on a linear route that included Scenic Drive, a mountain road with a breathtaking vista. “People said they never appreciated how beautiful the view was until they were able to get up there on a bike,” says Whitt.
While many cyclists and in-line skaters enjoyed the challenge, she suspects the steep grades intimidated others; there were only 5,000 total participants from this city of 700,000. Next year, the ciclovia may be moved to flatter, more populated areas to attract more people.
Despite the modest turnout, Whitt says the cidovia inspired her. “I was excited that people were getting to know their neighbors. Little kids were coming out of their houses to wave, and we saw a lot of dogs out there. We had to set up water stations for animals next to the water fountains for people.”
Windy City Cycles
At four times the population of El Paso, Chicago is proposing a cidovia, called Sunday Parkways, which could draw much larger crowds this summer. No stranger to car-free events, every year the city hosts Bike the Drive. Fifteen miles of Lake Shore Drive, an eight- lane superhighway, are closed to traffic, drawing 20,000-plus cyclists.
The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation is spearheading the Sunday Parkways effort and has raised much of the $400,000 needed to run three to five trials, pending approval from the mayor’s office.
The proposed route uses the city’s historic boulevard system, connecting three large parks on the west side of town, largely through low-income areas. In 2006, when the bike federation first pitched the idea, it faced opposition from churches along the boulevards who felt alienated from the planning process and worried street closures would hurt their attendance. They complained to their alderman and the project was stalled.
In spring 2007, the federation invited church representatives and other community leaders on a fact-finding trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, to experience its ciclovia. Called Via Recreativa, or Recreational Path, Guadalajara’s event involves a seven-mile route that draws up to 500,000 participants each weekend. It has brought a wave of customers to businesses that had previously been shuttered on Sundays.
Wowed by what they saw, including churches holding outdoor services along the route, the Chicago clergy decided to endorse Sunday Parkways. In turn, the bike federation agreed to postpone the proposed ciclovia hours until after services let out.
“Now the churches who had challenged us in the past have joined our stakeholders committee,” says the bike federation’s Adolfo Hernandez.
“They’re supporting Sunday Parkways because public health is a major issue in these neighborhoods,” Hernandez says. “Our main goal is to get more people to be active. We’re trying to change the way people view these streets and the way resources are used in the city.”
Look, Ma: No cars. Restricting autos from parks creates healthy places for people.
In Park: Some agencies are finding that closing roads can revitalize parks.
Road Rage: Motorists often resist proposed road closures, arguing that traffic intensity will result.
John Greenfield is a Chicago-based freelance writer who covers a wide range of topics in his writing, including transportation and environmental issues, travel, sports, and taverns. His work has appeared in such publications as Bicycling, Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, and Momentum. He can be contacted at greenfieldjohn@hotmail. com. His article on the car-free parks movement appears on page 40.
Copyright National Recreation and Park Association May 2008
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