Every September Austin’s Zilker Park, one mile west of downtown on Lady Bird Lake, becomes “Amsterdam for a Weekend” as thousands of cyclists, regular and accidental, descend on the parking-starved Austin City Limits festival for three days of live music. The 2008 ACL fest, which took place the weekend of September 26, was no exception.
Though event organizers 3C provide racks with capacity for 2000-plus bikes, the bike racks fill up early on, and later-arriving concert-going cyclists find themselves locking thousands more bikes to railings, fences, telephone poles, tree trunks, and (making for a pretty cool sight) into the tree branches themselves.
The weekend snapshots – of cyclists from all over town making their way on city streets to Zilker Park, and of the thousands of bikes at the fest itself – are great images to show local officials what could be if we provide the infrastructure, education, and yes, parking for the most efficient, sustainable and healthy form of transportation there is.
