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 love cycling. And I have been using Toronto's bike share system to get around over the last few weeks (both for work and personal stuff). There's no better way to get around when the city is busy. But it was also a reminder that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to cycling infrastructure.

Here are a few observations:

• The Bike Share mobile app has got to be the worst app that I have ever used. First of all, it's called PBSC. I think this was a deliberate choice so that it's impossible to remember and impossible to locate on your phone. Because once you do find it, it's an awful experience.

• I struggled to make it from downtown up to midtown a few days ago. Can I blame the Bike Share bike instead of my lack of physical conditioning? I can't see the majority of people wanting to do this sort of ride. This is where e-bikes and e-scooters come in.

• Many of the bikes have something wrong with them.

• We don't have enough bike lanes and bike-friendly streets. I know that some you don't want to hear this. But it's the truth. There are a lot of streets in Toronto where it is terrifying to be on a bicycle. This is true even in the center of the city.

• If you're not familiar with Toronto, you won't get this point. But Queens Quay is a seemingly complicated street for many people to navigate. Cycling along here in peak summer is an exercise in dodging people as they meander across the bike lane.

• We need dockless bikes. I'm sure that the team is doing their best to load balance across the network, but it is often a challenge to find an available dock at the end of a trip. There are ways to do this that avoid bikes being left everywhere.

• And while we're at it, we should also add e-scooters to our roster.

What would you add to this list?

Last week the Ryerson City Building Institute published a terrific report on Toronto’s Great Streets. It profiles five streets in the city that have been “redesigned for greatness.” They are:

• Harbord Street (continuous bike lanes)
  

• Roncesvalles Avenue (placemaking and people)
  

• St. Clair Avenue West (dedicated streetcar lane)
  

• Queens Quay West (public waterfront promenade)
  

• Market Street (prioritized for people and patios)
  

But what exactly makes a street a great one? The report describes it in this way: “They all play a key role in making the surrounding neighborhood a great place to live, work, and visit.”

This relates closely to what the City of Toronto calls a “complete street”, which is an approach to accommodating multiple kinds of users, enhancing the local context, and determining which trade-offs to make.

And there will always be trade-offs. I am fairly certain that all of these street redesigns were contentious at the time when they were proposed. Because at the end of the day they will never be all things to everyone.

I remember the St. Clair West fight vividly because I moved to the neighborhood in 2009 and the dedicated streetcar lane didn’t fully open until 2010. From 2005 to 2017, streetcar ridership grew 23%. But drivers have remained grouchy.

I now walk Market Street every single day and I agree that it’s one of the most beautiful and functional streets in the city. But the bollards are constantly getting beat up by drivers attempting to parallel park and the retail vacancy rate has not been 0% like is suggested in the report.

Queens Quay West is also a magnificent street. It was a giant step forward in terms of the quality of the public realm in this region and I spend a lot of time there. But it’s of course not perfect. All of us have seen the reports of cars ending up in odd locations, including underground, along the waterfront.

Riding your bike there can also feel like a challenging game of Frogger with all of the pedestrians that now obliviously meander back and forth across the cycling trail. I suggest riding with a good blow horn. The report rightly mentions the lack of delineation between these users.

But cities are a living laboratory and none of these streets should now be considered static. We are fortunate to be in a position to critique levels of greatness. If anything, the map at the top of this post tells me that we need to create more greatness across the other areas of this city.