On May 16th, Kansas City’s successful Car Free Weekends on Cliff Drive will expand onto the streets of the Old Northeast neighborhoods for a full-fledged Ciclovia called Sunday Parkways along Gladstone Boulevard and the Indian Mound.
Following the lead of Bogotá, Columbia, cities around the world have begun regularly closing streets to automobile traffic and opening them to people. In Bogota they call it Ciclovia, and in other cities they use names like Sunday Parkways, Summer Street, Open Streets, etc.
The streets will be filled with people walking, bicycling, jogging, skating, etc.; and family-friendly activities like yoga, face painting, live music, food vendors, puppets, a dog show, bike skills clinics, and much more. The Parks Department and the City’s Bike/Ped program home to expand Sunday Parkways to include all six Council Districts and run monthly from May to October.
Tonight the Plaza Branch of the KCMO Public Library hosts a lecture and book signing with Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do. It’s a very interesting analysis of the psychological, physical, and technical factors of traffic. The book includes bicycling and walking, so this event will be of interest to alternative transportation fans as well. Rainy Day Books will be selling Traffic at the event, and the author will sign copies purchased there this evening.
Tom Vanderbilt Monday, September 14th, 6:30 p.m.
Plaza Branch Library
4801 Main Street, KCMO 64112 (map) More info and RSVP.
Yesterday the KCMO City Council finally approved a complete overhaul of the city’s outdated planning/zoning/development regulations. The new development code is a huge step towards more compact, sustainable, and multi-modal development.
Some highlights…
Pedestrian Zones: Ensures walkable streetscapes that are safe and inviting for pedestrians.
Reduced Parking Requirements: Businesses have to provide less parking - facilitating redevelopment of older areas, paving less green space in new developments, and encourage more transit usage.
Bicycle Parking: new businesses and multi-family housing required to provide bicycle parking for visitors and customers, as well as enhanced bike parking for residents and employees.
Traffic Impact: developers must now study the impact on bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit users when their projects generate additional automobile traffic.
The new code will start being phased in over six months and be fulling enforced in one year. Advocates spent many hours negotiating with city staff and private developers, and many of you testified at public hearings or wrote letters to city officials. All of that work paid off with a much better end result.
Today city officials and Northeast neighborhood leaders conducted a ceremonial closing of Cliff Drive. As part of a new Car-Free Cliff Drive program, the historic road will be closed to automobile traffic and become the exclusive domain of pedestrians and bicyclists every weekend until October. Cliff Drive is also undergoing a big renovation to enhance its charms even more in the future.
With this historic move, Kansas City joins the ranks of other world cities that are closing streets to promote healthy, family-friendly activities in the public space. If this test proves successful and popular, the city could expand it to include car-free days in other areas. Just imagine how pleasant the Country Club Plaza could be without the steady stream of cars and SUVs…
It all started in Bogota, Columbia where every Sunday over 60 miles of city streets are closed and become open air festival of walking, jogging, bicycling, music, families, etc. It’s called Ciclovia, and it has spread all over the world.
Car-Free Cliff Drive will start on Fridays at 2:00 p.m. and continue until 8:00 a.m. on Monday. If Friday or Monday is a holiday, then the closure starts on Thursday or lasts until Tuesday. To really get enjoy car-free, think about getting there on foot or by bicycle. If it’s too far away, take the bus. The Metro #30 Northeast route is your best bet. Take it to Lexington and Brooklyn and walk two blocks to the entrance near the old reservoir, or go to St. John and Elmwood walk four blocks north the drive’s eastern entrance.
The excellent StreetFilms site has a cool video of the some naturally occurring chicanes, the traffic control device that forces automobiles to slow down by creating obstacles for them to go around. While street sweeping isn’t that common in Kansas City, you can see see a bit of the chicane effect in many urban neighborhoods where narrow streets and parked cars also force motorists to slow down.
