More Cities in Canada Dabble With Pedestrian-Only Streets

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

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

This summer, in a pilot project, Vancouver turned Water Street in its touristy Gastown district into a pedestrian zone. Halifax, in 2017, called itself the first city in the Atlantic provinces to design a streetscape project in which patios, pedestrians and cars shared the road. Toronto began its outdoor dining program, CaféTO, 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.