What would the streets be like without cars and buses? CycLOUvia in Louisville offered a glimpse as Bardstown Rd. was closed to traffic Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013 to offer space for bicycles and pedestrians. Three miles of road, from Broadway to Douglas Blvd. were closed from 2pm until 6pm to allow the public to use any and all forms of non-motorized vehicle.

IU Southeast Alumni, Emily Rodeheffer attended the event with her daughter, Sophie.

“I’m in town from Indy to visit my family for my birthday and it was a cool activity for all of us to do together,” she said. “My daughter loved it.”

This is the second official CycLOUvia, but is based off of the concept of Cyclovia, which originated in Bogota, Columbia. The word itself means “bike path” in Spanish. The idea of closing crowded streets for brief periods of time has spread throughout the US in progressive cities like Portland and LA and now Louisville.

Mikey Altieri, a mechanic at Parkside Bikes, which was one of the event sponsors, said he lived in LA and witnessed their version of the event, called CycLAvia. He said he was glad to see this kind of thing taking off in Louisville.

“This is a huge step for this city that is embracing becoming something better,” he said. “It allows people to step into the street and view the city from a different perspective.”

Altieri said the turnout for the second CycLOUvia was exponentially larger than last year, but that he noticed many people still took the sidewalks even after the event started.

“I’m not a psychologist,” he said, “but it shows that we’re conditioned to routines.”

Eventually the notion caught on and the Bardstown Rd. become flooded with people. Among the varied types of transport, perhaps the slowest were the strollers. The crowd seemed to find order in the different speeds of participants and arrange lanes accordingly, like a highway for pedestrians.

“It’s cool. I’ve seen penny-farthings, roller blades, unicycles-lots of interesting bicycles,” Kelly Herman, a participant in Sunday’s crowd, said.

At promptly 6 pm the Louisville police, who helped overlook the event, slowly cleared the road to make way for evening traffic to resume its route on Bardstown Rd.

More events like this are scheduled in other parts of Louisville and pending public approval, will become more frequent.