This weekend is the annual Tulip Festival in Albany’s Washington Park. On some level the event celebrates the region’s Dutch heritage (bicycle connection to come?) with true American style overconsumption of high fat, high sugar foods. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any frites being sold but I’m sure there were plenty of places to buy fries, funnel cake and the like. You’ll have to forgive the initial rant, I seem to have strayed from the topic.
I was riding through the park on my way to the Downtube yesterday morning when everything was still quiet as the festivities had yet to begin. Since the park has been blocked off to all traffic for the duration of the event, I had the roads pretty much all to my self save for a few other folks who were wandering around or preparing to set up. Of course it was a pleasure not to have to deal with the usual stream of car traffic. (On more than one occasion I have nearly been clipped by motorists making a right turn in front of me as I approached the Madison/Willet intersection.) Which brings us to the title and the raison d’etre of this post: Sunday Parkways Programs.
The idea behind Sunday Parkways is to close off a stretch of roads one Sunday a month and open it to non-motorized traffic: bicyclists, walkers, joggers, skaters, you name it. The idea was started in Bogota, Colombia and is called Ciclovia there. The program has been around for the better part of a decade now and is extremely popular in the Colombian city. A number of cities in the US have picked up on the program and are calling it Sunday Parkways. Chicago is one city that is actively promoting the Sunday Program idea: http://www.healthystreets.org/pages/sunday_parkways.htm
For the past few months, the NY Bicycling Program has been advocating for a Sunday Parkway Program in Washington Park. Ideally, we would have liked to roll out the inaugural Sunday as part of our Capital Bike Month festivities but that doesn’t seem like to happen at this point. We are still trying to build momentum with the local businesses and neighborhood associations to support such a program. I think once we get some local support we can get the city to buy into the program, at least on a pilot project level. We would like to encourage other upstate cities to explore the option as well. Its a great initiative to support healthy travel options with relatively low cost to the city involved. We will continue to advocate for the program here in Albany and if anyone would like additional information or support for starting the program in another city, please drop Jenn or myself a line at the NY Bicycling Coalition: nybc@nybc.net or 518.436.0889.
