People love Summer Streets, Seattle’s summertime open streets events on neighborhood commercial streets in Greenwood, Alki, Ballard and Rainier Valley. They also love Bicycle Sunday, Seattle’s innovative open streets event that has been making sections of Lake Washington Boulevard car-free for a handful of Sundays every summer for decades.

Now, imagine if next year Seattle combines the two ideas to create a series of neighborhood open street fairs connected to area parks by a miles-long loop of car-free neighborhood streets. If you just said to yourself, “Wow, that sounds awesome,” you are right.

The good news is that the city is considering events like this thanks to a helpful, not-so-subtle push by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. I had the opportunity to join SNG members, Councilmember Sally Bagshaw, various city staff and Cascade Bicycle Club staff for a study trip to Northeast Portland’s Sunday Parkways event over the weekend. It was the second time I’ve been to a Sunday Parkways event there, but it’s still an overwhelmingly awesome thing to witness.

For those not familiar with Sunday Parkways, it’s basically a loop of mostly neighborhood streets (often neighborhood greenways) that, for a handful of hours, is car-free (see an old but good StreetFilm here). Held in different parts of the city throughout summer, each route connects city parks where there are street fairs and entertainment like music or free exercise classes or rock climbing.

And it is filled with tens of thousands of people of all ages cruising around and having a good time (imagine three STPs worth of people, except with way less lycra and way more kids on balance bikes). It may be one of the greatest community events ever created. (more…)