An Austin Holiday Tradition Goes Car-Free at the 37th Street Lights

Image: mirsasha / Flickr Creative Commons

The elaborate and offbeat displays of Christmas lights fashioned yearly by residents along West 37th Street in the city’s North University neighborhood are one of those “Keep Austin Weird” situations that actually lives up to our eclectic reputation. Though participation dipped in the 2000s after a group of neighbors first started the tradition in the mid-1980s, the 37th Street Lights came back strong in 2015 and has barely seen a hiccup since, although the pandemic forced a year off in 2020.

But this year, organizers of the event are trying something totally new with the help of the City of Austin — through the new Living Streets program launched last month by the city’s Transportation and Public Works Department, the event’s decorated stretch of West 37th Street will be temporarily closed to car traffic during its main viewing hours between sunset and 10 p.m., allowing the street to function as a pedestrian-friendly promenade ideal for enjoying the detailed displays of kitsch at a relaxed pace.

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It’s a perfect showcase for the benefits of the Living Streets program, which offers a streamlined permitting platform for neighborhoods to request various forms of closed streets using temporary barricades for safer community use — a more permanent form of the city’s street closure initiative offering recreational space during the social distancing period of the pandemic in 2020. According to Robert Foster, one of the 37th Street residents who worked to bring back the lights in 2015, the city hopes to solicit feedback from the event’s organizers on the street closure process and gain more knowledge of the program’s user experience as the initiative rolls out citywide.

Austin’s ‘Living Streets’ Could Make Your Neighborhood Walkable Again

Foster mentions that the dazzling displays of lights are often designed with small details and interactive elements best seen at a walking pace, and he’s noticed that in recent years a majority of visitors have started arriving on foot — making the location ideal for increased pedestrian space. “The street is just really fun to see from the middle of the road, and it seems unfair that only cars get to do that safely,” he says. The newly walkable 37th Street Lights celebrates its opening night this Friday, December 8, and runs every night at sunset through the New Year.