VISTA — The city’s third annual Cyclovia on Saturday will coincide with the grand opening of a new segment of the Inland Rail Trail, running along the rail right-of-way from Mar Vista Drive to Civic Center Drive.
Cyclovia is an annual community event where portions of East Broadway and South Citrus Avenue are closed to motor vehicles, leaving the streets open to pedestrians, bicyclists, skaters and people using other forms of nonmotorized transportation.
The event runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and students enrolled at a Vista Unified School District campus can earn credits toward their permit to ride a bike to and from school each day. (Visit the VUSD booth for more information.)
Street vendors will also be selling merchandise and food, and a bike rodeo and group rides are scheduled throughout the morning.
A group ride will connect the newly completed Inland Rail Trail segment with Cyclovia downtown Saturday morning. Riders should meet at 8:30 a.m. at Mar Vista Drive and Phillips Street, then travel along the 1.1-mile path to the Civic Center-Vista Transit Station for a 9 a.m. ribbon-cutting celebrating the segment’s opening.
From there, the group will ride north along Civic Center Drive to the Cyclovia event downtown.
The new segment creates a continuous, separated path for bicyclists and pedestrians from the Civic Center-Vista Transit Station to the Escondido Transit Center, about 12 miles to the east.
The new segment is the third of four planned phases between San Marcos and Vista. The final phase would close a roughly two-mile gap between Civic Center Drive and North Drive, linking the newly opened path to a trail segment completed in 2021 near the Oceanside city line.
As The Coast News reported in June, SANDAG had to return about $11.7 million in state construction funding for the final phase because its design was not far enough along to meet a spending deadline. The agency said it planned to continue design work and seek funding again in a future grant cycle.
