Let’s walk and bike to revitalize the downtown
It’s driving and parking that got us into this mess, Michelle Perry says.
The following is a rebuttal to Tyler Dawson’s recent column, “It’s not a Sparks Street problem, it’s a downtown problem”:
The Citizen’s Tyler Dawson says that improving Sparks Street requires “a wholesale change to how Ottawa thinks of downtown,” and that “for the city, the best bet is to make all of downtown, not just Sparks, a place people can get to and around with some degree of comfort.” Yes, absolutely!
But, strangely, he limits the discussion to transit and driving: “It could be the most beautiful laneway in the city, with brilliant cuisine and dazzling entertainment, but still nobody would come if it was hard to get to either by transit or car, and if either option was too pricey or parking too much of a pain.”
Yes, better and cheaper transit will help. But easy driving and parking is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Let’s not forget that the car invasion — the building of the Queensway and its downtown ramps, the relentless widening of streets and narrowing of sidewalks, the tearing up of the streetcar tracks — trashed the downtown in the first place. You need only look at old photos of the downtown, with people casually crossing — or even standing in the middle of — its streets, to see what we have lost.
The work of reclaiming downtown for people has hardly begun. It is hampered by politicians who cater to their suburban constituents, city bureaucrats who prioritize driving because that’s what they’ve always done and business owners who assume that thriving shopping districts depend on easy access by car and cheap and plentiful parking.
They underestimate the importance of cyclists and pedestrians to the local economy. The shopping district of Wellington West, in the Hintonburg and Wellington Village neighbourhoods, for example, is thriving, and its BIA looks at how its customers travel.
Its 2016 travel survey found that 66 per cent of shoppers got there on foot, eight per cent biked, and eight per cent came by transit. Only 18 per cent drove. Study after study after study comes to the same conclusion: Cyclists and pedestrians support urban shopping districts (and business owners underestimate their contribution).
Let’s extend a wholehearted invitation to walk and bike downtown. A bit of sidewalk widening at intersections, a few commuter bike routes and a street tree here and there are not enough.
We can widen all of the sidewalks, and make them flat this time (and free of ice and snow). We can build a door-to-door cycling network for all ages and abilities (cycle tracks on busy streets; traffic-calmed side streets). We can return rows of street trees to the downtown. There is space to do all of this — it’s a matter of political will.
People are ready for this change. In the densest part of downtown, 53 per cent of households are car-free, and 41 per cent of households are car-free in the surrounding neighbourhoods, according to the 2011 origin-destination survey (up from 40 per cent and 35 per cent in 2005). We are walking and cycling in record numbers, and frankly are tired of being told that we can’t do so in safety and comfort because driving and parking still come first.
We’ve made some progress in returning downtown streets to people, and thanks should go to the community activists, city staff, privatesector leaders and elected officials who got us this far. But we’re also missing too many opportunities, making “trade-offs” that just reinforce the status quo.
We need to decide. Should downtown be a great public space, or a great place for driving and parking ? It can’t be both.