110 Freeway

From PasadenaStarNews.com

By STEVE SCAUZILLO

The 110 Freeway from Pasadena to Los Angeles was crowded the morning of Sunday, Oct. 29, not with car traffic but rather with a steady flow of everything people-powered.

From folks riding bicycles, scooters, rollerblades, skateboards or just putting one foot in front of the other, more than 50,000 descended on the six-mile closed-off stretch of the Arroyo Seco Parkway 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 the same the freeway was closed to vehicles. 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 70 mph. Now it is cool to take it easy and see all the sites. You see the things you don’t see (when driving),” said Heather Rothenay, 39 of Lake Elsinore. She’s taken part in other open streets events in San Diego and Riverside.

Photo by Daniel Lee on Unsplash

Read More

From PasadenaNow.com

Pasadena is gearing up for a historic and festive event on Sunday, Oct. 29, when the Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the 110 Freeway, will be closed to vehicle traffic and opened to people walking, biking, or on any form of active transportation, for six hours.

The fun event, called ArroyoFest 2023, marks the 20th anniversary of the first time that the parkway was transformed into a car-free zone for biking, walking, and exploring.

If you’re into running, you can sign up and arrive early for the “Run the 110” event, a chip-timed 10K point-to-point run. This starts promptly at 7 a.m. at the north end of the route in South Pasadena. Runners need to arrive at the starting line by 6:30 or 6:45 a.m.

Read More

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.

Read More