Houston's Sunday Streets events can be hit-or-miss.

When the monthly events work out, closing a street to cars and opening it up for recreational use, they attract a buzzy crowd.

April's Sunday Streets, on Spring Branch's Gessner Road, was a hit. The route, wrote Chronicle reporter Dug Begley, "played host to the screams of children and chatter of adults on foot or riding bicycles, scooters, unicycles and even, in a few cases, rolling by in wheelchairs." The city estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 people attended.

But May's, the last Sunday Streets for the season, was a miss. The 1.5 miles of Fondren Road that were closed looked forlorn.

In a Fiesta parking lot, a trio of fitness instructors valiantly led a small group in a routine of squatting and lunging, their lonely whoops of encouragement echoing hard off the asphalt. On the street, few families strolled past. Some Brays Oaks residents struggled with shopping carts on the sidewalks, either unaware or uninterested in the opportunity to use the closed street as they wished.

The only sound of urban life was the grumble of a generator from a food truck parked in the median.

This is what Sunday Streets looked like today. pic.twitter.com/Kh2pwfsglW — Allyn West (@allynwest) May 21, 2017

Around 3:45 p.m., a few minutes before Fondren was scheduled to turn back into one of those four-lane thoroughfares of long blocks and large parking lots that dominate much of Houston, a few cars chose not to wait and skipped the cones.

Those cars drove slowly, at least, either embarrassed or concerned, but they just created more questions. Is this what Sunday Streets is supposed to be? Why does the event work some months and not others? Why do events like this work better in other cities?

Three years in, where does Sunday Streets go from here?

SUNDAY STREETS was conceived in 2012, when Raj Mankad, an activist and editor of Cite: The Architecture + Design Review of Houston, started a petition asking Mayor Annise Parker to "open up a Houston street to pedestrians once a week."

For Mankad, claiming a street in this way is about more than recreation. It's about showing Houstonians that streets can be useful — even pleasant — places for people, not just cars. "It's a collective exercise in imagining what could be as we rebuild streets and plan the future city," he says.

The city started Sunday Streets two years later, marketing it as a way for families to be physically active. The very first one, held on a rainy day in the Heights, drew about 3,000 people to a 2.5-mile route on White Oak and Quitman.

The city estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 came out to Fondren, but it felt much smaller than that.

The best-attended Sunday Streets was the one on Westheimer in Montrose in 2015. The city estimates that more than 20,000 people came.

That seems great — until you consider that Siclovía, the twice-yearly open streets event in San Antonio, has drawn more than 83,000 people.

And that the CicLAvia in Los Angeles, considered the most successful of its kind in the U.S., averages 100,000. Romel Pascual, the executive director, said that a single CicLAvia has drawn more than 200,000 Los Angelenos. (On social media, the group averages more than 4 million impressions.)

And then there's the wellspring of them all: Ciclovía in Bogotá, Colombia, which started in the '70s. On Sundays, the 75-mile, car-free route draws about 2 million people who run, dance, do yoga or ride bikes.

Why doesn't Sunday Streets draw as many Houstonians? What are other cities doing that Houston isn't?

FOR ONE thing, people always know how to find San Antonio's Siclovía, which started in 2011. It's always downtown.

"That's where the people are," says Stephanie Jerger, who directs communications and community engagement for the YMCA of Greater San Antonio, which now runs the event. "That's where the excitement is."

"Your route matters," she says.

Putting the route downtown, Jerger explains, allows the Siclovía to connect to at least three neighborhood parks. These parks become activity hubs where vendors and nonprofits set up tents with interactive games.

Then there's the matter of staff and money.

Houston's Sunday Streets is run out of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, where two staff members manage the event alongside all their other duties. The event is underwritten by Cigna, a health insurer, which pays for the entire cost for the season. (They declined to share that number for this story.)

San Antonio's Siclovía was also city-run — at first. But the city, realizing that the event was more than it could manage, soon gave control to the Y. Jerger now works on each week's event full-time, 40 hours a week, and her team of three handles outreach. They hired a private company for traffic control and other logistics.

Each Siclovía, which is held twice a year in the spring and fall, costs about $150,000, half of which is covered through corporate sponsorships: H-E-B is the largest sponsor, joined by Humana, University Health Systems and others. The Y pays for the rest. Siclovía also earns revenue from vendors, who pay $200 to participate.

Though Siclovía, like Sunday Streets, was started with public health in mind, it's become much more than that, Jerger says. "Families look forward to it. Kids learn how to ride bikes there. Health organizations provide free screenings. H-E-B does cooking demonstrations and passes out healthy snacks."

"It connects the community to resources," she says.

BUT THE model of models is in Los Angeles.

CicLAvia, which takes place about five times a year, has a staff of 12 and its own nonprofit status. Alissa Walker, the urbanism editor for Curbed, says, "CicLAvia has become an institution."

"This is the best day in L.A.," she says. "This is L.A. at its best."

Walker echoes Jerger's observation about the importance of well-chosen routes. But in L.A., that goes beyond putting them where people or excitement happen to be. "The routes are always connected to transit," she says. (Metro is a partner.) "And they have been strategically placed in areas where improvements were already coming to the city."

"One of the first routes went through downtown, where we now have good bike lanes. Another route went from downtown all the way to Venice Beach, where the Expo Line [the light rail] was installed."

It would be as though Houston were to hold a Sunday Streets downtown on Lamar, where our protected bike lane is, or along Metro's Green Line. You wouldn't have to drive to a place just to go walk or ride your bike.

"We're sick of being in our cars," Walker says. "There's a real hunger for experiencing a different way of getting around the city."

CicLAvia, which started in 2008, is also girded by data, which urbanists love. (And it's girded by branding, which hipsters love. You can buy cool CicLAvia tanktops and make tax-deductible donations, all with the click of a button.) Both USC and UCLA have completed studies after CicLAvias that demonstrate improvements, temporary though they are, in air quality and economic impact along the routes.

Now businesses want to get involved, Walker says. That data helps them see why they should. As transit tends to lead to development, so do CicLAvia routes. Businesses have "adopted" intersections to create pop-ups and parklets. Why splurge on a billboard when 100,000 people roll past your door?

CicLAvia is so popular that outlying cities developed their own versions. (Imagine a Sunday Streets in Pearland or Friendswood.) Walker says there seems to be an open streets event somewhere in Southern California nearly every weekend.

"We knew it could be tremendously successful," Pascual says. "Things that succeed in L.A. just get big — if they're done right. Part of being a global city is being able to say that what we do becomes a global model."

MANKAD ADMIRES what Houston, a city with global aspirations of its own, has done with Sunday Streets. "There's something attractive about the city running it and not having a ton of money behind it," he says. "Each [event] takes the shape of the neighborhood. It's powered by the people."

"But now's the time to plan on expanding it. There are so many ways it could be more."

That's going to require money — and pensions aside, Houston's city government doesn't have enough to go around. Would it come out of the already-strained parks budget? Another city pot?

Mankad wonders whether a city that's becoming known for its unique financial arrangements and public-private partnerships could create something like that for Sunday Streets. He imagines a "Friends of Sunday Streets" that could help with fundraising — not to mention marketing and bringing more activities to each route.

And what about the routes? When Mayor Turner inherited Sunday Streets, he said he wanted to continue taking it to new neighborhoods. During his administration, the event has moved outside the Loop to Garden Oaks (which drew about 8,000 people this spring) and beyond the Beltway to the Energy Corridor.

Next fall, one of the routes will be in Gulfton.

Thuy Trang La, who works in the Mayor's Office of Special Events, said it's important to "highlight the community." She says, "A lot of people don't know certain [parts of the city]. It gives you an idea what's around in Houston."

And while that sounds inclusive and is good in theory, not all parts of the city are equally conducive to the kind of "activations" that make for a Sunday Streets that can draw the buzzy crowds you see on Westheimer or 19th Street or Washington Avenue. Places that are already tight-packed with businesses and sidewalks work better. There's not a lot you can do with a street like Fondren, where stores, restaurants and other places to stop and explore are spread thin.

And this raises the larger, almost spiritual question of what the city wants Sunday Streets to be. Is the event only about public health? Are a dozen people doing jumping jacks in a parking lot enough? Is it more inclusive to serve only a few people, but in a lot of different places around town, or to serve very large numbers but in only a few places?

Or, now that Houston — where traffic remains a major concern — has a reimagined bus network, an expanding bike-share program and a City Council-approved bike plan, could Sunday Streets grow enough to become a meaningful part of that "paradigm shift" in transportation that Mayor Turner discussed when he first took office, so much so that walking, biking and active living become real options for those of us here who are sick of our cars, who hunger for a different way of getting around the city?

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