Pedestrian of Lights

The L.A. Department of Water and Power's annual Griffith Park Festival of Lights is a local tradition -- as is the part where you sit in your car for two hours as the line of cars -- which snake down Los Feliz Blvd. and even down the 5 freeway -- slowly creeps along.

Now, Martini Republic's Angelenoblog reports that the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council, which meets this Tuesday, has an item on their agenda that could change all of that:

A joint recommendation and motion by the Parks, Recreation & Open Space and the Transportation Committees:

That the Department of Water and Power shall convert the annual Festival of Lights from an automobile to a pedestrian event that will promote environmental responsibility and will conform with the DWP Board’s recent adoption of principles recognizing the need to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions to combat global warming from human sources. Discussion and action as appropriate.

The Atwater Village Neighborhood Council approved a similar motion last week. Meanwhile, the Griffith Park council elaborates its reason behind the motion:

As it is currently configured, it promotes the generation of toxic reenhouse Gasses by idling automobile engines, encourages the inefficient use of fossil fuels, and teaches the 500,000 individuals--mostly children—-who visit it annually that it is fun to pollute the environment and use energy inefficiently.

Compounding this, is the fact that the Festival causes GHG Emissions to occur outside as well as inside Griffith Park. While event-goers idle their engines in long queues, through and local traffic in one of the City's most densely travelled corridors is forced to idle on Festival nights. The 5 Freeway is reduced to a crawl for more than a mile in both directions, and on the more popular evenings, when one to two hour waits are the norm, the traffic slowdown reaches to the 134 Freeway. This ripple-effect annually causes many hundreds of thousands more automobiles as well as long-haul trucks and other commercial vehicles that are not bound for the Festival to idle, producing more Greenhouse Gas Emissions and burning more fossil fuel.

According to the background info, last year approximately 156,000 automobiles drove through the Festival of Lights, while 17,500 people checked it out via the pathway next to the car route.

I've seen the festival from both the car and as a pedestrian, and I've gotta say, the pedestrian route is the way to go (mainly to avoid the aforementioned infuriating 2-hours-plus sitting in your car).

But I gotta admit, as a pedestrian, some of the magic is stipped away. You see the light strings. You hear the mechanics. And you have to view everything twice (and backwards, since parking is located in the zoo, at the end of the line).