ArroyoFest To Shut Down The 110 Freeway Once Again For Pedestrians and Cyclists

On Sunday, the Arroyo Seco Parkway will shut down for only the second time to vehicle traffic, making way for people to walk, cycle, push a stroller or strap on some wheels of their own. Runners can also participate in a 10K run that starts at 7 a.m.

ArroyoFest 2023 will take over the 110 Freeway, shutting down both directions from the 5 Freeway to Glenarm Street.

Participants can also expect family friendly events at three activity hubs.

Sycamore Grove Park in Highland Park, will feature the annual Lummis Day Festival, where there will be a wide variety of live performing artists, as well as other cultural acts, exhibitor booths.

The Downtown Historic Mission District in South Pasadena will also include exhibitor booths and an electric family bike demonstration zone.

And in Lincoln Heights, the final hub will be adjacent to the Lincoln/ Cypress Metro station.

History of ArroyoFest

Robert Gottlieb, an emeritus professor at Occidental College, was one of the organizers of the first ArroyoFest held in 2003. When organizers approached the transportation agencies at the time to close the freeway, he said, they were “bemused.”

“They couldn't really believe that we really wanted to do an event like that,” he said. “You don't close down the freeway for an event like that unless you're a big Hollywood studio.”

It took organizers more than two years to convince the transportation agencies, namely CalTrans, “that this would be a breakthrough event in terms of rethinking and reenvisioning what it meant to do transportation differently and to make the Southern California region a more bikeable and walkable place,” Gottlieb added.

An event like ArroyoFest, Gottlieb said, can “spark the imagination” and make “what seemed impossible could in fact become possible.”

“It changes the way we talk about things like transportation and environment and as it stands today around climate,” he said. “An event like ArroyoFest breaks through that sense of impossibility.”

Changing the transportation system, even if it's through one event like ArroyoFest is an environmental justice issue, Gottlieb said.

“While we're walking and riding on the freeway, or as in my case, pushing the baby stroller this time, it's that both joyous feeling of experiencing something very differently and being part of a process to help make the change happen,” he said.

Take a moment to connect with the freeway

He also hopes that people will take a moment to connect with the freeway rather than pass through it, as that’s how the thoroughfare was designed.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway, the curvaceous first freeway in the West, was designed with a 45 mph speed limit to allow travelers to appreciate the scenic route. It was intended, Gottlieb said, to be a “greenway" rather than a “concrete channel.”

A year after the first edition of ArroyoFest, Gottlieb said, he received a call from a colleague about how traffic on that section of the 110 had come to a standstill. As people waited in their cars, he recounted, a mariachi band came onto the freeway from nearby Sycamore Grove Park and started playing music (in the previous year, the organizers of ArroyoFest had cut an opening in the fence to connect it with the freeway).

Drivers got out of their cars and began clapping and dancing. Street vendors came from the park and people were soon enjoying tacos and burritos, he said.

He said he has often used that as an example in his writing to illustrate "this kind of magic of thinking about what happens when you experience this 7-mile stretch differently.”