On May 14th from 1-5pm River Rd. Holiday makes a comeback!

ROAD HOLIDAY!

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 the following Sunday.)

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 time of COVID-19, this is an even more enticing and healthy opportunity for activity.

Organized by Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg

Walk It! Bike It! Lewisburg has been holding them since 2017 by the river. 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. It has also been hosted on River Road south of town. The site north of town is better connected to downtown. Because that section of River Road is a state road, the process is fairly involved, requiring a Special Occupancy Permit application be submitted to PennDOT and extensive detour signage be put in place.

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 fairly casual event. The place is the activity. That said, we hope to have various outdoor activity tables again along the route, whether Audubon, Linn Conservancy, Sierra Club, or Community Garden…