AARP - Segunda Juventud - Bogota on the Move

Bogota on the Move
With its emphasis on health and community, Bogota's weekly bikefests—ciclovías—have earned Colombia's capital city a reputation as a neighborly kind of town.

By Jill Greenberg
October 2009

Video: Ciclovía Bogotá
(October 2009)

Ciclovías USA

Circle the Globe, Save the Planet (Spring 2009)

Nicaragua: Meaningful Travel (Winter 2008)

Heritage and Hikes
(Fall 2008)

More in Travel

Bogota, Colombia: Not just another overstuffed, over-polluted city in Latin America. Rather, Colombia’s capital city has gained a reputation as a people place.

Every Sunday and holiday from 7 a.m to 2 p.m., this Andean metropolis shifts gears, banning motor traffic and encouraging its residents to mingle in an innovative approach to improving health and fostering community: the ciclovía. Cruise along the seemingly endless miles of asphalt and you’ll see everything from a wrinkled man patiently climbing the hilly landscape on a handmade bicycle that squeaks with every turn of the pedals to a pack of riders suited up in a second skin of spandex zooming by on $1,000 bicycles.

The varied route of the ciclovía (Spanish for “bike path”), which wends through about 75 miles of roadways and streets reserved exclusively for pedestrians and bicyclists, mesmerizes with the sights and sounds of the city’s residents taking a well-deserved day off. Clusters of teenagers on stout racing bikes popping wheelies share the streets with knots of abuelitas walking in the afternoon sun, and entire families take the opportunity to share rides and ice cream cones.

CLICK TO START SLIDESHOW
Ciclovía Bogotá

Bogota boasts the world’s oldest continuous ciclovía; its roots can be traced to 1974, when activists decried the lack of recreational options in the city. Two years later, the municipal government formally created the ciclovía. By 1986, the route was 33 miles long and, in the mid-1990s, it was more than doubled to today’s length.

“We’ve been building cities for 5,000 years, and only in the last 50 have we been building them around cars,” says Gil Peñalosa, the former head of the city’s parks and recreation department. “The ciclovía tells people that for seven hours a week these roads are for people, not cars.”

Peñalosa is the brother of former Bogota mayor Enrique Peñalosa, known for introducing a wide range of reforms to make the city more livable. In 1995, Gil Peñalosa wrestled the ciclovía away from the city’s transportation department and breathed new life into the program, creating a professional staff and volunteers, expanding the route, and adding a number of amenities, including the recrovía, which offers everything from yoga and stretching to salsa and aerobics classes in parks throughout Bogota. You can’t miss the recrovía; you can hear it from two blocks away. Music booms from loudspeakers as gaggles of men, women, and children of every age and size wiggle, jiggle, and laugh while getting their exercise.

Ciclovías U.S.A.

Chicago
A coalition of community groups sponsored two similar events in 2008, where more than 10,000 people biked and walked through diverse neighborhoods. One Open Streets event in August 2009 brought out thousands more to enjoy cultural and physical activities on eight miles of streets through five inner-city Chicago neighborhoods.

El Paso
El Paso held one of the first ciclovías in the United States on a Sunday in May 2007. The city expanded the event to every Sunday in October 2008, and planning is underway for another car-free Sunday sometime next spring.

Miami
Miami Mayor Manny Diaz spearheaded the city’s first Bike Miami Days in 2008 and added six more ciclovías in 2009. Now the city hosts monthly guided bike rides through various Miami neighborhoods, and Bike Miami Days was held September 20.

New York
In 2008 and 2009 the Big Apple hosted Summer Streets, nearly seven miles of car-free streets and curbside entertainment on three Saturdays in August. Summer Streets offered music, culture, and fitness activities on Manhattan’s East Side along Park Avenue and other thoroughfares down to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Portland
This summer Portland had three Sunday Parkways, 7.8 miles of car-free roads lined with activities that attracted 15,000 to 20,000 participants. Portland has already scheduled five Sunday Parkways for 2010.

San Francisco
San Francisco started with two Sunday Streets events last year, and this year will have a total of six monthly car-free Sundays in alternating locations throughout the city. Activities include walking, biking, yoga, and hula hooping.
For Carlos Castillo, 43, participating in both the
ciclovía and recrovía has changed his life. The office worker began by going to the ciclovía. Then, two years ago, he joined the recrovía. “When I started riding in the ciclovía, I became more muscular,” Castillo says. “Now, with the addition of classes in the recrovía, I feel calmer. Coming to the recrovía reduces my stress the rest of the week. The classes have been a good thing for my health overall.”

And for the city’s health as well, when it comes to bringing residents together. More than a million people attend every week. The route is a reflection of Bogota’s true diversity as it weaves from the ramshackle southern edges of the city, where cement-block houses with corrugated tin roofs line the streets, to the fancy northern suburbs of ultra-modern high-rises with well-tended gardens.

“The ciclovía is one of the few places in the city where you see a mix of everything,” says Peñalosa, who now heads Walk and Bike for Life, a Canadian organization that focuses on promoting healthier lifestyles worldwide. “It’s the only place in Bogota where you can see the bank president with his family at the same place and at the same time and doing the same activities as the person who sweeps the floor at the bank. It is like an exercise in social integration. Young, old, fat, skinny, rich, and poor can all mix.”

The larger sense of a city “family” becomes personal as real familias take time to be together. It’s not at all uncommon to see groups of families, neighbors, and friends walking, biking, or stopping for a snack at one of the many vendors that line the streets selling fresh juices and plump, ripe fruit. The father-son team of Jorge and Humberto Romero rides a 12-mile route across Bogota from north to south. Humberto, 42, an administrator, says his father loves their Sundays together at the ciclovía. “For the air, for the exercise, for the conversation,” says Jorge, a 73-year-old retired teacher, as he prepares to zoom off on his bike.

Benefits
Research shows that the ciclovía generates social, environmental, and health benefits. “Women who go to the ciclovía are more likely to be physically active the rest of the week,” says Olga Lucía Sarmiento, Ph.D., of Bogota’s Universidad de Los Andes. She and a group of researchers from all over the Americas have studied the ciclovía’s health effects. In additional research, Sarmiento found that ciclovía participants reported having a higher quality of life than those who aren’t involved. And, not surprisingly, a study of one area along the ciclovía route found better air quality and reduced noise on Sundays.

With Bogota as an example, the number of ciclovías is growing worldwide, from Quito to Paris. “We call it a healthy epidemic,” Sarmiento says. In the United States, though, ciclovías have been slow to gain a following. Some cities, including El Paso, San Francisco, and New York City, hold periodic car-free events.

In Chicago, which holds one ciclovía a year, more than 10,000 people have shown up to enjoy the city’s Open Streets event. Leonor Cabello, 69, a native of Bogota who now lives in Chicago, attended in 2008 and volunteered to help with this year’s event, “The ciclovía here in Chicago is a lovely thing,” she says. “It’s a shame we don’t have this every weekend.”

While Cabello misses her home country’s ciclovía, many of those who enjoy spending Sundays there know how lucky they are. “The ciclovía is the best thing to do in Bogota,” says María Casas, 43, a secretary who attends weekly with her mother. “It’s an example for the rest of the world. It helps us to be happier, get to know more people, make friends, and exercise. It’s a very good thing for us.”

These links are provided for informational purposes only. AARP does not endorse, and has no control over, or responsibility for, the linked sites or the content, advertisements, materials, products, or services available on or throughout these sites.

Return to Top