More Cities in Canada Dabble With Pedestrian-Only Streets

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More Cities in Canada Dabble With Pedestrian-Only Streets

It’s rare for traffic barriers to signal much other than a construction detour, but the bollards and concrete slabs blocking cars from a handful of Montreal roads this summer have a dual purpose. They also represent a type of public space emerging in more ********* cities: pedestrianized streets.

Montreal is Canada’s poster child when it comes to these urban spaces. Mayor Valérie Plante has praised the city’s seasonal

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— known to have a dynamic mix of terraces, activities and outdoor cultural events — as a signature part of Montreal summers.

More ********* cities have become allured by the possibilities of pedestrian-only streets.

This summer, in a pilot project, Vancouver turned

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in its touristy Gastown district into a pedestrian zone. Halifax, in 2017, called itself the first city in the Atlantic provinces to design a

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in which patios, pedestrians and cars shared the road. Toronto began its outdoor dining program,

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, three months after Covid took hold and then made the program permanent.

Proposing a car-free street project was, before the pandemic, a pretty reliable way to get into a turf war with local businesses. Retailers view blocking traffic mostly as a sure hit to their bottom lines because they say it discourages usual clients from shopping, as they arrive by car and need places to park.

Pushback from businesses tends to be met with an equal amount of bureaucratic hand-wringing by the city government, which has many of its own considerations to make, like adapting dining bylaws and managing traffic congestion.

But operating outdoors was the safer option at the height of the pandemic, and businesses became open to seeing the street as more than a place to park, said Kelly Gregg, a professor of urban planning at the University at Buffalo.

“It did accelerate the willingness of cities to experiment with pedestrian and public space design ideas,” said Dr. Gregg, who began researching pedestrianized streets during her doctoral studies at the University of Toronto.

“Toronto adapted really well during Covid,” she said, adding that curbside cafes and dining options provided a lifeline to businesses, allowing them to run under strict lockdowns and physical distancing.

Last fall, the Toronto outdoor-dining program CaféTO saw a

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in permits from businesses, which criticized the high fees and clunky application process.

On the other hand, the program in Montreal, which also took off in response to the pandemic, appears to be more popular with local business owners.

In 2022, the municipality took ******* steps to entrench pedestrianized streets with an investment of 12 million ********* dollars over three years. The city expanded its list of

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from the spring to fall, cutting off traffic through areas where 2,100 businesses operate.

The number of visitors has doubled since the program started in 2021, the city has said.

On a recent reporting trip to Montreal, I explored a handful of these streets. My last stop was in the Quartier ******, where salons and tattoo parlors were winding down for the evening as dinner service picked up on lively restaurant patios. Lanterns and colorful flags decorated the outdoor dining areas. Food delivery workers lingered around their bicycles at a kebab shop. Around the corner, a hip-hop dance battle was about to start, and spectators sat around watching competitors warm up.

I popped into Arriba Burrito, a ******** restaurant that opened about five years ago, and I spoke to Karan Singh, its manager. He had mixed feelings about the pedestrianized street project and said that some streets, like the one-and-a-half-mile stretch of

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, were better managed than others.

“We lose so many people because they don’t find any parking,” Mr. Singh said, owing in part to the road construction near the restaurant he manages.

He also thinks the mix of activities on Mont Royal, especially the shops, are more successful at attracting foot traffic.

The early designs of pedestrianized streets were largely about shopping and retail, Dr. Gregg told me. As modernism took hold in urban design, cities began to rethink these spaces, seeing them as ways to add greenery and promote local climate goals, for example, or to encourage entertainment and leisure.

“The pedestrianization idea is much more about public space and entertainment and sort of building a livable city,” she said. “It’s about consuming an urban experience more than it is about consuming retail goods.”

Trans Canada

Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The New York Times in Toronto.

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#Cities #Canada #Dabble #PedestrianOnly #Streets

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