Irvine residents may have a unique opportunity to get pedaling next year as city leaders explore briefly shutting down some streets to allow for people-powered transportation to take center stage.
Originating in Bogota, Columbia, ciclovia (Spanish for cycleway) is an open streets event that allows residents and visitors to explore the community in a different way, whether it’s by walking, biking or roller skating. Ciclovia events have been hosted in multiple cities worldwide, including locally in Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Los Angeles.
Still in the preliminary planning stages, Irvine leaders are hoping to add such an event, named “CiclaIrvine,” to the 2024 calendar.
Early planning details show the event could feature vendors, music and other nonvehicular movements of people and “turn the asphalt into a public space, quasi park,” city staffers said during a council meeting earlier this month.
Bill Sellin, communications coordinator at Bicycle Club Irvine, welcomed the news. Sellin and his fellow cyclists have taken the train to Los Angeles to attend its CicLAvia event, calling it an “incredible experience.”
While Orange County does not have the same biking culture as Los Angeles, Sellin said, ciclovia events bring in people from different communities, not just cyclists.
“The open streets concept is kind of the idea of taking back the streets for human beings. It’s not just there for the cars,” Sellin said of roadways. “Having people of all sorts — on feet, on rollerblades, in wheelchairs, on skateboards, on roller skates, on scooters, on bicycles — all just sharing the road, it just feels like a party. It feels like a festival.”
Caregivers would not be comfortable with children riding scooters or tricycles in the middle of the street, Sellin said, but with road closures, the streets “become a big playground.”
Sellin joined the Bicycle Club Irvine in 1981, when it was first formed, as its second member. The club has grown…
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