River Road Holiday 2024
Sunday, October 6th from 1-5pm on River Road in Lewisburg
ROAD HOLIDAY IS BACK!
The location is once again on River Road north of Lewisburg, from Water Street up to Winter Farm Lane, near the main entrance to RiverWoods. (Rain date is October 20.)
Ever heard of or attended an Open Street event? They are also sometimes called Sunday Streets, or Ciclovia (“Cycle Way” in Spanish), or Road Holidays. The basic idea is that a piece of everyday infrastructure focused on cars, i.e. a street or road, gets temporarily redefined as an exciting public amenity for people-powered activity, in other words, a park or a promenade. And in the post-COVID era, this is an even more enticing and healthy opportunity for activity.
The day of, weather permitting, everyone is invited to come on down and enjoy the waterfront road as it stretches from the Borough north into Kelly Township. It’s a casual event. The place is the activity! That said, we will have various outdoor activity tables again along the route, whether Audubon, Linn Conservancy, Sierra Club, Lewisburg Arts Council, or Community Garden…
Organized by Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg
Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg has been holding road holidays since 2017. The existing road is officially closed to vehicular traffic for a few hours and opened instead to bikes, pedestrians, runners, skaters, etc. Similar events have taken place regularly for decades in various parts of the country and the world, but the idea has been expanding in less populated areas in the past ten years, often sponsored by health care providers working to promote physical activity.
Locally, this type of event had been held several times in 2010 (the year before the Buffalo Valley Rail Trail opened) and Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg brought it back to town. It has also been hosted on River Road south of town, but the site north of town is better connected to downtown. Because the northern section of River Road is a state road that traverses both Lewisburg Borough and Kelly Township, the road closure process is fairly involved, requiring a Special Occupancy Permit application be submitted to PennDOT and extensive detour signage be put in place.
