Culture
Confirmed: CicLAvia Means Better Air Quality for Angelenos
L.A.’s popular open-streets day reduces air pollution, even beyond the dedicated route.
For one day every few months, CicLAvia shuts down a cluster of high-traffic L.A. streets to cars and opens them to humans. Using bikes, skateboards, wheelchairs, strollers, and feet, hundreds of thousands of people cruise, dine, and gander along the route.
It’s for good reason that the wildly popular event series, which began in 2010, is often held up as harbinger of the ‘new L.A.’: a city where entry shouldn’t require a car, where public space and street life are valued, and, perhaps, where the air is little easier to breathe.