Tag: pedestrian street

• La Rambla

  

  

  It’s hard to think of Barcelona and not think of its famed street, La Rambla. But this same street design (and name) also appears in other cities throughout Spain. The above two streets are in Palma. The first is also called La Rambla (which is supposedly derived from an old Arabic word meaning sandy riverbed) and the second is called the Paseo del Borne. Both follow the exact same urban design principles. They’re broad tree-lined streets with a large center median dedicated to only pedestrians. All car traffic is relegated to the sides. What’s great about this design is the following. One, it reallocates public space according to who uses it the most (i.e. pedestrians). Two, it consolidates the main pedestrian realm (in lieu of just having larger sidewalks on either side of the street). And three, it establishes a clear hierarchy for the street. Pedestrians are most important here, and that’s why they get the center position. It’s surprising that more cities don’t adopt this same design.

  2024.08.19

• Salt Lake City wants to turn Main Street into a pedestrian promenade

  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.

  2024.05.18

• Optimizing for cars

  Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America — a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road — 9 at most intersections — and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.

  From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.

  The other telling stat for me is the road’s crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.

  This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it’s no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.

  I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.

  Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.

  2022.08.18

• Should Market Street be pedestrianized?

  Next to the St. Lawrence Market (here in Toronto) is an appropriately named street called Market Street. It is a lovely street — perhaps one of the nicest in the city. It’s old and historic and it was completely redone several years ago (evidence here) with nice unit pavers, bollards, a curbless design, and seasonal restaurant patios.

  In the winter months, the restaurant patios are packed up and additional parking is added to that side of the street. It was designed to be adaptable and in my experience it seems to be working quite well.

  Right now the local Business Improvement Area is running a pilot project to see what this street might be like if it were to be pedestrianized. It was closed to vehicles this past weekend and the same will happen this upcoming weekend. Here’s a photo of what that looked like on Saturday:

  

  It’s not perfect. A number of people commented on Twitter that the seating needs some shade. But hey, it’s a pilot project. It is about giving people a taste of what the future could be.

  I am a fan of pedestrianized streets in the right locations and when executed well. And I think this stretch of Market Street is a perfect candidate. It’s already pedestrian-only to the north of Front Street and it has the right kind of “edges” to ensure that it can be properly animated.

  If you feel the same way, I would encourage you to fill out this short survey that the St. Lawrence BIA has put out. I would also be curious to hear your thoughts on pedestrianized streets in general. Leave a comment below.

  2021.08.23

• London to pedestrianize Oxford Circus

  

  I was just reading about London’s plans to pedestrianize Oxford Circus with two new semi-circular pedestrian piazzas (pictured above). And it reminded of two things.

  One, there are silver linings to this pandemic. And one of them is that it has forced us to rethink how we allocate public space and how we engage with it. It is incredible seeing Toronto right now with so many outdoor patios in full swing. Why eat inside when you can eat outside? We should have been doing this all along.

  Two, the transformation of Toronto’s Yonge Street cannot happen fast enough. We are sorely missing a pedestrianized spine through the middle of our downtown. This portion of Yonge Street currently looks like shit and I know that we can do much better.

  Think La Rambla in Barcelona. Grafton Street in Dublin. Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. These are the streets that seem to always draw you in. They are places where public life can play out. I’m pretty sure that I have never once visited any of these cities and not walked these streets.

  Thankfully Yonge Street’s transformation is underway. So let’s make it truly remarkable and one of the most beautiful streets in the world. That should be the bar we set for ourselves.

  Image: Westminster City Council

  2021.06.18

• A door and a street — walking Copacabana

  Rio de Janeiro has some pretty spectacular entranceways. Here is one that I found today on Rua Duvivier in Copacabana:

  

  It is a magical front door located exactly one block from the beach.

  The other gem I stumbled upon today was Rua Carvalho de Mendonça, pictured here:

  

  Toward the left (above) is a narrow bollard-separated lane for cars. The rest of the right of way is dedicated to pedestrians and bicycles.

  When I was there today the sun was shining and the retail was in full swing.

  

  But perhaps my favorite thing about this street is the residential terraces sitting on top of the single storey “retail podiums.”

  They add life (and eyes) to the street.

  2018.12.29

• Kingston&Co at the Beaches Jazz Festival

  

  One of the best things about Toronto in the summer is that it feels like there’s a special event happening almost every day of the week. It would be impossible to go to everything, but one of my favorites is StreetFest at the Beaches Jazz Festival, which is running this week from Thursday (July 24) to Saturday (July 26).

  If you’re from Toronto, then you’ve probably been. But if you haven’t been, StreetFest is basically a 2.5 km stretch of Queen Street East in the Beaches that gets closed to traffic so that hundreds of thousands of pedestrians can walk around and listen to jazz music on the street. It’s a lot of fun and I’m told there will be 40 bands this week.

  This year TAS has sponsored a tent and so the Kingston&Co Condominiums team will be there to talk to people about our project (and also listen to some jazz music!). I’ll be there on Thursday night (tomorrow) and so if you’re around, come by and say hello. If you can’t find us, send me a tweet.

  If you haven’t been to StreetFest before, here are two tips. It gets super busy and traffic is often bad heading in and out of the area. If you have the option of biking there (or riding on someone else’s handlebars), I would highly recommend that.

  Also, given how busy it is, I remember it being difficult to find a beer the last time I went – all the restaurants and patios were full. So you may want to consider investing in a CamelBak Pack. We wouldn’t want you getting dehydrated 🙂

  I hope to see some of you there.

  Image: JR Photography

  2014.07.23