Imagine cycling more than 50 kilometres through Toronto without competing with cars or trucks.

A fantasy? Not in Mexico City where every Sunday from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. a network of streets are closed for Ciclovia. A Spanish word for cycleway, Ciclovia originated in Colombia, but has spread to cities around the world. Toronto’s version is called Open Streets TO and was inspired by what cities such as Mexico City have done. Our version, however, is much more conservative.

Here Open Streets only happens two Sundays a year and is limited to Bloor St. between Christie Pits and Sherbourne St., and Yonge St. from Bloor down to Shuter St., forming a lopsided T. Still a fledgling event, it attracts more people to it each time, but I confess I didn’t fully grasp how great the concept was until I rode the Mexico City event last weekend.

There were thousands of people out on the streets Sunday morning, most cycling, but many jogging, pushing strollers or just walking the streets. There was even one fellow on a hoverboard and quite a few dogs, either running alongside or riding in baskets on bikes. Along the route there were programmed activities: hula hooping; bike repair classes; yoga; salsa dancing.

Mexico City has an extensive bike share program called Ecobici, with 452 stations throughout the central city. After quickly signing up for a three-day pass for about $14 (longer duration passes are even cheaper) we were off. We rode for two hours, covering 23 kilometres, exchanging bikes just before the 45-minute loan periods expired. Mexico City also loans free bicycles along the route.

Every intersection had friendly, uniformed people monitoring the cross traffic, sometimes giving information over bullhorns. At busy intersections along Paseo de la Reforma, one of the great wide avenues of the city (think a more muscular University Ave.) they pulled banners back and forth, stopping cycle traffic, as vehicular traffic passed on cross streets as they do in Toronto. For a brief while, the constant vigilance necessary for urban cycling was lessened, allowing time to actually look at the city, not just move through it. It was one of the most relaxing rides of my life through a beautiful city.

Most interesting were the routes off the main avenues, down smaller streets and through residential neighbourhoods. I didn’t look at my map for a long time, instead following the route and other riders, deeper and deeper into the city. And then at 2 p.m. the intersection monitors told riders it was over, and the city returned to its usual patterns.

My Mexico City Ciclovia experience came after a day and a half of wandering the city on a first-ever visit. Through NAFTA, immigration and shared geography, we’re deeply connected to this city, but as a Canadian, the size of it is staggering. When you fly in, the city goes on for so long you almost doubt you’re travelling at jet plane speeds. There’s just so much of it. With a metropolitan population of more than 20 million, that’s about three GTAs or almost two-thirds of Canada, all in one place. This is the kind of rudimentary calculation that makes a place like Mexico City understandable or relatable in some way, though it doesn’t really capture it.

Even cycling for 23 kilometres during Ciclovia, which seemed like we were seeing a lot of the city, really wasn’t much. When I looked at the mapping app on my phone so I can see where I’ve been and how far I’ve gone (it’s called Moves for those who are curious), we had covered just a tiny sliver of the city.

And yet the understanding afforded by pedalling that little bit has made Mexico City seem, at least a little bit, like it’s a familiar city. There’s something powerful about human-powered mobility that provides this understanding that driving doesn’t. When you do it yourself, you notice everything: distance; elevation changes; and neighbourhood shifts.

When I first moved to Toronto I had a human-powered revelation one rainy night. My apartment was at Yonge and St. Clair but in the evenings I’d often be at a friend’s house on Huron St. in the Annex to use their computer to look for a job. I’d usually catch the last subway north at Dupont Station to St. Clair West Station and take the streetcar over to Yonge. One evening I missed the last train and had a bit of a panic, wondering how I’d get home: there was no money to spare for cabs then.

So I walked home and was soon embarrassed by how close the two locations were. It was only getting there by walking that I made the connection between the two neighbourhoods. Imagine if Toronto’s Open Streets was more extensive and included circuits into residential neighbourhoods and, perhaps more importantly, outside the city’s core where cycling can be more fraught. Ciclovia Etobicoke. Ciclovia Scarborough. There’s a lot of territory to cover.

Many people are reluctant to get on a bike in Toronto so the relative calm of Open Streets is a good time to introduce new riders to the city streets. Also, imagine how well we’d get to know our own city by riding through it.

If I was feeling conspiratorial I’d suggest not everybody in charge of Toronto wants you to know the city like this. If we did, more people might start demanding more frequent and more extensive Open Streets TO days. They also might demand more equitable cycling infrastructure and safer street design for pedestrians, things City Council seems to be able to get away with putting off or even cancelling despite the now-routine carnage on Toronto streets.

Right now, the staff-recommended cycling lanes for a planned redesign of Yonge St. in North York are in jeopardy as Mayor John Tory is against them. Worse, the mayor is pushing a plan to put bike lanes on parallel streets when Yonge in North York is about as wide as a Mexico City grand avenue. There’s room for everyone.

Mexico City is far from a cycling paradise and has terrible traffic and a legacy of smog problems, but there’s a lot we can learn from it. The amount of cycling infrastructure I saw during five days exploring and how extensive Ciclovia is there puts Toronto to shame. How can they pull off such bold things while we’re stuck in 1950s’ debates about lousy bike lanes on Bloor or Yonge?

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Next time Open Streets TO rolls around, get out and roll it for yourself. Then ask for more.

Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef