Cooler weather may boost crowds at South L.A.’s first CicLAvia

The cooler weather predicted for Sunday may encourage more bicyclists, walkers and skateboarders to participate in CicLAvia compared with the brutally hot day in October when the car-free rolling street party was last held, organizers say.

“It is supposed to be 25 degrees cooler than in October, which is a good thing,” said CicLAvia spokesman Robert Gard. But he said it was difficult to project whether the number of attendees would top the 40,000 to 50,000 or so tallied two months ago because some people may be too busy Sunday with pre-holiday gatherings and shopping to join in CicLAvia’s first route through South Los Angeles.

CicLAvia, which closes streets off to auto traffic, has attracted more than 100,000 bicyclists and others on some routes since it began in Los Angeles in 2010.

Forecasts for Sunday call for temperatures in the mid-70s, with no rain under partly cloudy skies. “That is perfect, classic California weather” Gard said.

The 11th CicLAvia in Los Angeles will use a six-mile-long route mainly along Leimert Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard east of Crenshaw Boulevard and on Central Avenue south of Washington Boulevard. It includes two neighborhoods important to the cultural and musical history of African Americans in Los Angeles: the Leimert Park area and the Central Avenue hub.

The path will be open to riders and strollers between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., although some of the streets will start to be closed to cars several hours earlier, authorities said. Seven intersections will remain open to car crossings. Some bus routes will be altered as well, according to Metro.

Metro is expecting many bicyclists to use the Expo light-rail line, which runs parallel and relatively close to parts of Sunday’s CicLAvia; they urge bicyclists to enter train cars only through doors marked with yellow decals and, for safety reasons, to not bring bikes on escalators but to use elevators or stairways instead.

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