Freeway festival stops traffic
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Pedestrians walk on the 110 Pasadena Freeway as part of the Arroyo Fest on Sunday in Pasadena, California.
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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Thousands of people on foot and bicycles giddily took over eight miles of the city's oldest major freeway Sunday in a symbolic snub of Los Angeles' famed car culture.
Exuberant runners vaulted the steel divider, bicyclists swerved across three lanes and moms in sneakers pushed strollers down on-ramps normally jammed with cars during the three-hour closure.
One man on rollerblades headed north in southbound lanes.
A woman pumped her fist and yelled "beep beep!"
"It brings joy to me," said 33-year-old Gabriel Castillo of Los Angeles, ending a short walk down the freeway where he first learned to drive. "I've been living here all my life and I've never seen anything like this."
Police sent drivers on a detour through surface streets in the neighborhoods encompassing northeast Los Angeles and three adjacent suburbs.
Organizer Bob Gottlieb said the first-ever ArroyoFest was meant to spark the public's imagination about new ways of linking communities through public transit, affordable housing and cultural and historic organizations.
"It's reconnecting with a sense of place," said Gottlieb, director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at nearby Occidental College.
Sprawling Southern California depends heavily on freeways, which are jammed with heavy traffic at rush hours and sometimes on weekends.
Rare full shutdowns come only after major traffic accidents or odd-hour film shoots.
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