Release Car Free Vancouver Day on June 15th

Sunday June 15 marks Vancouver’s first ever, city-wide, CAR-FREE VANCOUVER DAY.
Over 100,000 are expected to come play in the streets, and experience our city’s future.

Evolving out of the past three summers’ wildly successful Car-Free Commercial Drive Days,
CAR-FREE VANCOUVER DAY features FOUR simultaneous car-free festivals – in Kitsilano, the West End, Main Street, and Commercial Drive.

“Less cars means more community.” says CFVD Co-founder Matt Hern. “This is a day to visualize what an ethical and ecological city might look like. To give people a chance to reclaim their streets, hang out with their neighbours, and enjoy a great car-free day. Cities all over the world are embracing car-free streets, far beyond what we have here. Its way past time for Vancouver to start thinking about massive reductions in SOVs, car-centric communities, and dinosaur development models.”

Ottawa has just announced that 50km of Parkways are to be closed to cars every Sunday morning this summer. Parts of Old Montreal are also going car-free throughout this summer, every day. Toronto’s Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market are a runaway success. London (UK) now has strict limits on car access downtown. And in Bogata, Columbia, millions participate weekly in the wildly popular car-free “cyclovia”.

Although the City of Vancouver has been hugely supportive, Car-Free Vancouver Day is a grassroots, citizen-led, and volunteer organized event. Each of the four community-initiated fests has a distinct neighbourhood flavour. Kitsilano boasts a tapestry of over 25 block parties all day with street “living rooms”, dances, performers and potlucks. Funky Main Street (between 12th and 16th) features a Farmers’ Market, fire show, MAINStage dance party and skateboard demos, running late from 4 to10PM. The West End shuts down Denman Street from 10AM to 6PM for parades, world music, square dance, and community tables, all with that cosmopolitan West End style. Bohemian Commercial Drive rocks from noon to six, with street hockey, spoken word, Tribal Harmonix/Burn BC Stage, a Healing Garden, tons of babies and dogs, and merry mayhem abundant.
The Fearless Mobile project is sponsoring a bicycle caravan that tours each of the festival sites while streaming live video to the Internet. Visitors to the site will be able to view the progress of the caravan in real time via Google Map.

Organizers strongly recommend that participants bike, walk, skate, or take transit from Fest to Fest — but DON’T DRIVE! Parking is guaranteed to be nasty. There will be plenty of treats, surprises, and friendly faces on the routes between the Fests. All Fests will feature Bike Valet Parking.
And of course, it’s all FREE: Free of charge. Free of boring corporate stuff. Free of cars.

www.carfreevancouver.org