Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Last year, I wrote about how Salt Lake City wants to build a new linear park around its downtown. That post can be found, here.
Fast forward to today, and the city's Department of Economic Development has just published a new comprehensive 215-page study that supports turning Main Street into a pedestrian promenade.
Specifically, the area running from South Temple to 400 South, and including 100 South from Main to West Temple:
As part of the study, they highlight a number of successful case studies from around the world, including 16th Street Mall in Denver, Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne, and Queens Quay here in Toronto.
In the case of Denver, they cite the one-mile stretch as single-handedly generating over 40% of the city's total downtown tax revenue! And in the case of Toronto, they refer to Queens Quay as a global destination. (Toronto readers, do you agree?)
Like most city building initiatives, this vision is will take years to realize. But it's interesting to note that, of the eight design alternatives included in the study, there is already one clear preference within the local community -- option B.
Option B is a pedestrian/transit mall, but with multi-use trails. In other words, it is a no-cars-allowed alternative that would still allow bicycles and scooters. Here's the street section:
If you'd like to download a copy of the full Main Street Pedestrian Promenade Study, click here.
I had a dinner in the suburbs this evening. And so in the afternoon today, I opened up Google Maps to figure out how I was going to get there.
I didn’t have my car with me — because I hate driving into the office — so in my mind, I was either going to take transit or take an Uber.
These are the time estimates that Google gave me:
A few days ago, Waymo announced (on X) that its robotaxis are now doing more than 50,000 paid trips every week across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
This means that the company is getting an average of 300 bookings every hour or five bookings every minute. And if you add in Austin, where it's currently offering a limited number of rides, the company has completed a total of over one million rider-only trips.
In the announcement, Waymo also went on to say that "fully autonomous ride-hailing is a reality and a preferred mobility option for people navigating their cities every day." All of this is something.
But perhaps the most important takeaway, right now, is that the company continues to claim -- by way of a study from Swiss Re -- that its robotaxis are already significantly safer than human-driven vehicles.
I don't personally know if this is true, but it's not hard to believe. I mean, human drivers suck. And assuming it is true, we should all want more robotaxis on the road, because statistically, we would be significantly safer.
The problem, though, is that autonomous vehicles suffer from a perception bias. We're all looking for them to fail. If a robotaxi gets into an accident, it's news. But if a human driver gets into an accident, it's standard operating procedure. It'll be interesting to see how and when this flips.
Last year, I wrote about how Salt Lake City wants to build a new linear park around its downtown. That post can be found, here.
Fast forward to today, and the city's Department of Economic Development has just published a new comprehensive 215-page study that supports turning Main Street into a pedestrian promenade.
Specifically, the area running from South Temple to 400 South, and including 100 South from Main to West Temple:
As part of the study, they highlight a number of successful case studies from around the world, including 16th Street Mall in Denver, Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne, and Queens Quay here in Toronto.
In the case of Denver, they cite the one-mile stretch as single-handedly generating over 40% of the city's total downtown tax revenue! And in the case of Toronto, they refer to Queens Quay as a global destination. (Toronto readers, do you agree?)
Like most city building initiatives, this vision is will take years to realize. But it's interesting to note that, of the eight design alternatives included in the study, there is already one clear preference within the local community -- option B.
Option B is a pedestrian/transit mall, but with multi-use trails. In other words, it is a no-cars-allowed alternative that would still allow bicycles and scooters. Here's the street section:
If you'd like to download a copy of the full Main Street Pedestrian Promenade Study, click here.
I had a dinner in the suburbs this evening. And so in the afternoon today, I opened up Google Maps to figure out how I was going to get there.
I didn’t have my car with me — because I hate driving into the office — so in my mind, I was either going to take transit or take an Uber.
These are the time estimates that Google gave me:
A few days ago, Waymo announced (on X) that its robotaxis are now doing more than 50,000 paid trips every week across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
This means that the company is getting an average of 300 bookings every hour or five bookings every minute. And if you add in Austin, where it's currently offering a limited number of rides, the company has completed a total of over one million rider-only trips.
In the announcement, Waymo also went on to say that "fully autonomous ride-hailing is a reality and a preferred mobility option for people navigating their cities every day." All of this is something.
But perhaps the most important takeaway, right now, is that the company continues to claim -- by way of a study from Swiss Re -- that its robotaxis are already significantly safer than human-driven vehicles.
I don't personally know if this is true, but it's not hard to believe. I mean, human drivers suck. And assuming it is true, we should all want more robotaxis on the road, because statistically, we would be significantly safer.
The problem, though, is that autonomous vehicles suffer from a perception bias. We're all looking for them to fail. If a robotaxi gets into an accident, it's news. But if a human driver gets into an accident, it's standard operating procedure. It'll be interesting to see how and when this flips.
It was going to take me over 4 hours to walk there. Over an hour to drive there. And 47 minutes to take the train there. Interestingly enough, cycling was also going to be faster than driving.
As soon as I saw this, I shut down the app and decided I would take the train. All I was interested in was the absolute fastest option. And for me at that moment, it was the train.
I recognize that this isn’t always the case. Sometimes driving is much faster than taking transit. It depends on a number of factors.
But as a general rule, when it comes to big and dense cities, you really can’t beat trains and bikes for moving the greatest number of people, as quickly as possible.
It was going to take me over 4 hours to walk there. Over an hour to drive there. And 47 minutes to take the train there. Interestingly enough, cycling was also going to be faster than driving.
As soon as I saw this, I shut down the app and decided I would take the train. All I was interested in was the absolute fastest option. And for me at that moment, it was the train.
I recognize that this isn’t always the case. Sometimes driving is much faster than taking transit. It depends on a number of factors.
But as a general rule, when it comes to big and dense cities, you really can’t beat trains and bikes for moving the greatest number of people, as quickly as possible.
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