20 years ago, the Arroyo Seco Parkway turned into a car-free party. Get ready for another
From LATimes.com
For the first time in 20 years, a section of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the West Coast’s oldest freeway, is set to close down for people to walk, bike, skate and run.
On Oct. 29, ArroyoFest will allow car-free exploration of six miles of the 110 Freeway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena.
Two decades ago, the first ArroyoFest was ahead of its time for Southern California, said Wesley Reutimann, co-founder and special programs director at ActiveSGV, one of the event organizers.
In June 2003, seven years before the first CicLAvia “open streets” event, ArroyoFest shut down the Arroyo Seco Parkway for three hours, giving thousands of people the chance to tour the freeway as they never had before.
“I had a real urge to take the exit to the 5,” bicyclist Steve Edberg told The Times in an article covering that 2003 gathering. “If I had 200 or 300 riders with me, I think we could have taken over that one too.”
The original ArroyoFest had been in the planning stages for 10 years before event organizers were able to persuade Caltrans and pull it off.
Twenty years later, Reutimann said, planning a revisit of the event has proved just as complicated.
“There are a lot of pieces that go into putting on an event like this,” he said. “It speaks volumes that the first one, they were able to successfully stage it in 2003.”
It’s a major undertaking involving various permit processes and agencies, including approval by the Pasadena City Council and a special event permit from Caltrans, according to Pasadena Now.
