Cars are getting locked out of a stretch of southwest Atlanta on Sunday as Atlanta Streets Alive returns to turn Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard and Georgia Avenue into one long car-free festival. The free event runs from 2 to 6 p.m., connecting the Historic West End to Grant Park for an afternoon built for walking, biking, skating and dancing instead of driving.
The route temporarily transforms portions of those two streets into public space, according to Rough Draft Atlanta, with the Atlanta Department of Transportation organizing the event alongside Propel ATL and other community partners. Organizers are encouraging anyone headed to the event to walk, bike or take public transportation rather than drive in, since the corridor will be off-limits to vehicle traffic for the day. The route itself stitches together six southwest Atlanta neighborhoods — Historic West End, Westview, Adair Park, Pittsburgh, Mechanicsville and Summerhill — according to the same report.
Exactly how long the route runs depends on which account you check: Urbanize Atlanta has described the West End-to-Grant Park corridor as 3.4 miles, while 11Alive has put the figure at 3.5 miles. Either way, it's a significant expansion from the very first version of this route: the inaugural West End Atlanta Streets Alive stretch, created in 2014 at the request of neighborhood leaders in partnership with the community, covered just 2.7 miles.
Who Can Show Up, and How
The ground rules are simple. Per Urbanize Atlanta, the free, family-friendly event is open to anyone on foot, bikes, scooters or skateboards — basically any mode of transportation except a car — and leashed dogs are welcome too. Streets along the route will be closed to motor vehicles and open to pedestrians and cyclists for the duration.
Atlanta Streets Alive has leaned on this same open-door formula since it first launched in 2010, when a stretch of Edgewood Avenue was opened up to bicyclists, skaters, walkers and anyone else not behind the wheel, per Urbanize Atlanta's reporting. The program went on hiatus for four years before bouncing back in September 2023, and it hasn't slowed down since: 2024 brought six separate Streets Alive events, a record at the time that topped the previous high of four events back in 2016.
A Program Still Setting Records
Organizers have said tens of thousands of Atlantans and visitors turned out for Streets Alive events across the spring and fall season last year, the same Urbanize Atlanta report notes. Before the pandemic forced a pause, the program had already staged 29 events, covered roughly 83 miles of city streets, and drawn an estimated 1.7 million people total, organizers told the outlet.
Where Sunday's event lands in the 2026 sequence is murky in the available reporting. Urbanize Atlanta has reported plans for a record eight events this year, while Rough Draft Atlanta described Sunday's gathering as the penultimate event ahead of a finale tied to the Westside Stride on Nov. 8 — language that points to a seven-event year. Neither count has been independently confirmed against an official schedule.
Street Closures and What to Expect
The Atlanta Department of Transportation has flagged the corridor from Gordon White Park to Cherokee Avenue SE at Grant Park for closure in a traffic advisory covering Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard SW and Georgia Avenue SE. Per the agency, most intersections along the route will be completely closed with barricades, while some may stay intermittently open with traffic-control personnel on hand. A separate ATLDOT program page lists street closures running from noon to 7 p.m. around the 2-to-6 p.m. event window, though that listing was dated well before Sunday's event and its applicability to this specific date hasn't been independently verified.
A similar West End-to-Grant Park route hosted live music in 2025, when Music in the Park signed on as the event's cultural sponsor and curated seven live performance stages along the corridor, according to Rough Draft Atlanta's coverage of that spring gathering.
Beyond the street takeover itself, the program's stated goals haven't changed: organizers say Atlanta Streets Alive aims to celebrate the city's neighborhoods, support local businesses along the route and bring communities together through shared public space. For Atlanta residents weighing whether to show up, the appeal is straightforward — four hours to walk, bike, skate or scoot through a stretch of the city with no cars in the way.
