I have friends who regularly go to car-free Sundays at Ayala to run or bring their bikes to get a bit of exercise before they go about their day. They come as far as Quezon City, but when I ask them how they get to Makati, they say they take their cars, park somewhere, and do their thing.

That’s all well and good, but the car is still at the center of how they move around Metro Manila.

While this weekly event succeeds in bringing people out of their homes and provides a safe space to interact with like-minded amateur athletes, it does little to promote its very essence: that we can live well in car-free cities.

Why Car-Free Sundays at Ayala Exist

Car-free Sundays at Ayala were a byproduct of several months of conversations in 2023 with Ayala Corporation, active mobility advocates, and cycling enthusiasts, sparked by public outcry and pushback against the removal of bike lanes along Ayala Avenue. What came out of these talks was a time-limited space for pedestrians to focus on their health and wellness.

The first car-free Sunday at Ayala started in September 2023 as a pilot test. It was well-received, and Ayala decided to keep it going.

For some of us at the time, it was a win. But as the years went by, I and others observed that it felt more like a PR stunt and containment strategy, and Ayala Corp. is just really committed to doing the bit because it brought about positive sentiments about their real estate brand and subsidiaries, and became the poster child for other car-free Sundays across Metro Manila (even if car-free Sundays in Emerald Ave. in Pasig existed long before Ayala did).

Today, we have car-free Sundays in Tomas Morato in Quezon City, Emerald Avenue in Pasig City, Gil Fernando in Marikina, and 5th Avenue in BGC, just to name a few. There used to be a car-free Roxas Boulevard in Manila, but Isko Moreno doesn’t care for his constituents… so… *shrugs*

Sounds like Metro Manila’s turning into one big car-lite celebration every Sunday, right?

Well…

Car-Free Sundays are Incomplete

In the last three years that I’ve been actively going to car-free Sundays across different cities, I have noticed an uptick in people going out of their homes before sunrise to bike or run. More families are coming together and having fun before they go to church or visit nearby malls, and honestly, I’m happy I have a couple of hours to do cadence training or LSD runs. I see my friends more (OMG I have friends!), and we use car-free Sundays as a meeting point to go to other places in the Metro.

On the surface, it all looks good. And I would love car-free Sundays to stay.

But still.

Car-free Sundays fall short of their supposed original intent: promoting car-free urban mobility. Outside of Ayala Avenue, cars won’t make way for cyclists and pedestrians. And outside of Sunday mornings, the car is king.

The problem isn’t that people now have a safe space to exercise. The problem is that the conversation stops there.

By simplifying car-free Sundays as places of athleisure and a PR stunt, we avoid the bigger problem: Why can’t we discourage car dependency and centrism every day?

A section of the road is car-free, but Metro Manila itself is not.

Car-free Sundays show us a glimpse of how cities can move without cars. But it fails to convince the general public that this can be an ordinary activity available to everyone, every day.