In 1968, in Paris France, in the midst of a huge public debate about the direction of that country, one slogan at that time stood out – “All Power to the Imagination.” ArroyoFest underlines that slogan because ArroyoFest is about imagination, about envisioning a place where there is a living stream, where communities connect rather than separate, where the diversity of people and of Nature is celebrated rather than undermined.

ArroyoFest is about possibility, about a new transportation corridor that includes a rail line (the Gold Line) and a rapid bus system  (the new Metro Rapid Busses to pass by this park and go along Figueroa). It includes new bike paths, even a new commuter bikeway from Pasadena to Los Angeles, which, if constructed, would undoubtedly go faster during rush hour than a car traveling the 110. It could also include new pedestrian walkways, like the proposed ArroyoWalk, that would allow people to experience the Arroyo by foot and bring life back into the street rather than quarantined in the car. Those possibilities could also include a different kind of roadway, a re-envisioned Arroyo Seco Parkway, with changes to the landscape of the parkway and surrounding communities made possible through the newly designated scenic byway status the Arroyo Seco Parkway has achieved. Lewis MacAdams used to argue 15 years ago that the Los Angeles River was a river, not just a flood control channel. Today, we talk about a river – and the changes that need to happen to reinforce that status – when we speak of the Los Angeles River. That was a discourse battle that succeeded.  Similarly, with ArroyoFest we need to begin talking about the 110 as a parkway, not a freeway, and by winning that discourse battle we can also begin to plan how to use our imagination and recapture what was best about the original parkway design.

ArroyoFest is about a Sense of Place, about the ways we connect with our past, celebrate community and diversity, and give rein to the public art, community art, youth art, and music and dance that are so important for our lives.

And ArroyoFest is ultimately about Change, about building affordable housing, including affordable housing at Gold Line stops, about maintaining our parks and creating new parkland, about managing the Arroyo Seco stream in new ways, about creating jobs like the sweat free living wage garment jobs provided by the SweatX cooperative.

Today we have imagined and envisioned, we have thought about possibility and established a sense of place, and we have brought about change by closing a freeway, walking on it, biking on it, and experiencing it in a way that has never been done before. It has been a magical moment. And to use another slogan from 1968, let there be two, three many ArroyoFests! Let us walk and bike the parkway every Sunday morning to appreciate the Arroyo and understand that a connection to Nature, to place, to history, and to change is right here in the city where we live, work, and play.

Good morning/afternoon. My name is Douglas R. Failing. I am the District Director for the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, District 7, covering Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. Caltrans is the owner and operator of the California highway system. And I am very happy to be here with all of you today.

The Arroyo Seco itself, a 22-mile stream, physically connects the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the Los Angeles basin. This historic freeway connects the people of the foothill communities to those in metropolitan Los Angeles.

We need to recognize the help we've received in arriving here today. Senator Richard Polanco (then Assemblyman) wanted to improve the appearance and enhance the safety of the Parkway in and near Los Angeles. Subsequently Assembly Bill (AB27) designated the highway as the Historic Arroyo Seco Parkway, giving it a state historical designation.

On June 13, 2002, U. S. Transportation Secretary, Norman Y. Mineta, announced that the Historic Arroyo Seco Parkway, was officially given a "National Scenic Byway" designation -- the first in Los Angeles County or indeed in any metropolitan/urban area in California -- and the fourth federal scenic byway designation in the state.

What is considered by many to be a California treasure, is now a national treasure because the National Scenic Byways Program will help to preserve the resources that exist right here for generations to come.

My grandfather used to tell me that we do not inherit the earth from our fathers, but we borrow it from our children. We need to return it to them in good order.

Caltrans and its many partners in transportation, look forward to improving the Arroyo Seco Parkway or Pasadena 110 Freeway -- and at the same time look back with pride on this historical freeway -- which brought us right here where we are today.

ARROYO FEST COMMENTS - The Arroyo Seco Parkway
Dan Marriot, Director of the Historic Roads Program

As the Director of the Historic Roads Program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC, I want to extend my welcome to you at this first ArroyoFest and extend greetings to all our fathers here this Father’s Day. I hope this will be the first of many opportunities for the people of the Arroyo and Southern California to engage with this signature and celebrated corridor.

This morning you had an opportunity to walk and bike one of the most significant historic roads in the United States—the Arroyo Seco Parkway. I hope the uncommonly comfortable commute enabled you to see—perhaps for the first time—many of the beautiful bridges, historic lights and the parkway’s unique asphalt and concrete pavement as you walked along the arroyo and its lovely chain of emerald parks. This parkway, a local gem, a part of the Arroyo culture and onetime alignment of Route 66, was designated last year by US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta as one of “America’s Byways.” It is the only urban road of its type in the Nation to be so honored and joins a select group of only 100 roads nationwide, including Route 1 through Big Sur, to be so recognized for its contribution to highway design, culture and innovation in the United States.

In fact, if one were to do an inventory of the most significant historic automobile roads in the United States the Arroyo Seco Parkway would undoubtedly rank near the top. Joining the likes of the other great roads in the American highway pantheon such as the Bronx River Parkway in New York and the Historic Columbia River Highway in Oregon—roads that influenced roadway design and established the culture and parameters for our national highway system —the Arroyo Seco Parkway established innovations and expectations that would become hallmarks of the twentieth century landscape.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway opened on December 30, 1940 to great fanfare and expectation as it ushered in a new era of transportation, linking downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena. Early accounts liken the parkway to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon due to its lush plantings of native trees and shrubs. The parkway winding along the Arroyo Seco and in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains was also envisioned as a new economic engine bringing efficiency and commerce to a burgeoning Southern California economy. It would launch the much admired and studied Los Angeles Freeway system and draw engineers and designers from the world over to study its advance design.

Today, it is hard to imagine the 63 year old Pasadena Freeway as anything innovative. But it is possible to envision the return of the elegant parkway with its lush native plantings, elegant street lights and beautifully restored bridges embracing the communities and parks of the Arroyo. We should also be envisioning a parkway with a marked improvement in safety, a reduction of accidents and a facility that Caltrans workers can safely maintain and keep free of litter and graffiti.

The National Trust, through a special federal byways grant and in conjunction with Caltrans, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and local communities is currently developing a corridor strategy plan designed to look at both the historic resources associated with the Arroyo Seco Parkway and opportunities to improve the safety, function and beauty of this historic road.

Not only does the National Trust believe that safety and historic preservation can work side by side, we believe that successful engineering and safety strategies for historic roads must recognize the unique and distinct qualities of an historic road in order to actually improve the safety of many of our nation’s historic roads—including the Arroyo Seco Parkway.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway is a parkway; it is not a freeway. As such, safety solutions and management will require innovation and a creative commitment to Context Sensitive Design—a new transportation approach that includes community design in transportation policy.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The Arroyo Seco Parkway was documented by the Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service for the Library of Congress. These recognitions, along with last year’s byway designation, demonstrate the significance of this historic road.

The planning committee and I look forward to your comments and observations. To kick off the community involvement process for the planning effort, I invite you to visit the National Trust booth and vote on the design of a logo shield.

Thank you very much and please join me in a simple, but important first step by referring to the Pasadena Freeway by its historic name—the Arroyo Seco Parkway.

Travel safely home today on the Arroyo Seco Parkway—one of the great historic roads of the United States.

I’d like to take a moment to thank Bob, and all those at the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, who helped pull together a single community policy agenda for the Arroyo that linked together so many varied community voices.

In many ways this reflects on what the Arroyo Seco itself does -- what the Los Angeles River does – and what the Santa Ana and the San Gabriel Rivers do further east. These are all rivers that for decades have served to divide communities. Now we are restoring them, and in turn, they are restoring us. They are serving not as a dividing force, but a unifying force. They provide a central focus to bring communities together. That’s why we all owe a debt of gratitude to the organizers and the many sponsors of this event because they have given us a special gift today: an opportunity to see where we live with new eyes.

This is what the former poet-laureate Robert Hass is doing with his innovative River of Words project. That project promotes educating children through art and poetry about where they live. What Robert Hass says about children I think can also be said about us, and what we are doing here today. “What happens when you ask kids to imagine places that are very real, to find the poetry in water and earth and stone? And what if they are asked not just to explore the simple beauty of a place, but to reveal its environmental wisdom, and find their connection to it? You get children finding their place in the natural world. You get children who know that water doesn't just come from a tap. You get children who know their "ecological address" as well as they know the name of their street or their town. You get hope.” That’s what we’re doing here, today. Finding our place in the natural world, and finding hope.

ArroyoFest is important because it provides a vision to make that hope finds its expression in the real world. Even though it’s visionary, ArroyoFest helps raise practical issues like stream restoration, the need for open space and parks in urban areas, how communities can develop linked agendas, and new transportation approaches In other words, the ‘carry-home message’ is that the only way we’re going to make the vision real is by changing the world through innovative and integrated projects. (I wanted to use the term ‘concrete projects’ but I’m not sure that’s the best choice of words for this crowd.)

The Arroyo Seco sets a high standard for these projects, and already has some great successes. I have walked beside the restoration areas in Pasadena – it looks like a rain forest up there -- and I recommend it to all of you. Green, cool and shaded, it is the very picture definition of ‘sylvan paradise’ – and it is literally, steps from the city. And I’ve seen the efforts that North East Trees and others are doing along the other sections of the Arroyo, not to mention further down the Los Angeles River. And this is where we, at the State, can help and are helping to fund and supporting these efforts: Because the Davis Administration is committed to making and finding new ways for urban people to connect to the natural environment.

Most of you know about our efforts at Cornfield, and Taylor Yards on the LA River. We have acquired land at Confluence Park, where the Arroyo Seco meets the LA River. We gave $2 million in Prop. 13 money to the city of Maywood for a Riverfront park. And we have $23 million from Proposition 12 for the Los Angeles River and the San Gabriel River Watersheds. We hope to have the money out to qualifying applicants for that by October of this year. And there is more money in Propositions 40 and 50. We have established two new conservancies in the LA Area: One for the San Gabriel River watershed and lower Los Angeles Rivers.

The other is the Baldwin Hills Conservancy where we literally stopped the bulldozers in their tracks and acquired Vista Pacifica and its million dollar views. And we’re linking Baldwin Hills all the way down Ballona Creek to the Ocean. It’s also no secret that the State is right now engaged in efforts to acquire the Ballona Wetlands. It is a high priority for us, and a key element in helping restore Southern California’s coastal wetlands. We are doing this because this administration is taking a very new approach to watersheds. We recently signed an important document that commits our agencies to work together – and with help and advice from the public – to improve the ways we approach restoring watersheds throughout the State. We are getting our act together so that we can help support your efforts.

In fact, when we went out to find ways to improve our approach to watersheds, we looked closely at the experience of the Arroyo Seco as one of 10 exemplary watershed groups in California. The Watershed Memorandum of Understanding, as it’s called, is an important document that will have major impacts in years to come. It means we will be more effective in supporting your efforts at the local level. It means working more effectively with you in a partnership. Because, if we’re going to restore these rivers and watersheds, if we’re going to see our world with new eyes, if we’re going to educate our children so they know their address on this planet– we’re going to have to work together as partners.

Thank you, again, Bob and all the sponsors and all those who worked so hard to make this event a success. You stopped the river of cars so we can appreciate the river itself. You have given us a day that this city – and everyone here – will long remember. It marks the start of a new era of partnership and understanding. And after the celebrating, it’s time to get back to work – to tear up the concrete -- and make it happen together.