Banff opens downtown street to pedestrians
Redevelopment includes customizations to reduce area's barriers to accessibility
A years-long project to make the town of Banff more pedestrian friendly has finally come to fruition with the official opening of the revitalized Bear Street and Art in Nature Trail.
All of Bear Street in the downtown is now a shared area where vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians are “equal users,” modelled after the popular Dutch concept of “Woonerf,” or living street.
“The redevelopment of the street is really focused on creating a pedestrian-first environment, a place where vehicles feel like guests, and is intended to draw more pedestrians to Bear Street, which traditionally has seen one-fifth to one-sixth of the pedestrian volumes of Banff Avenue,” said Darren Enns, director of planning and development with the Town of Banff.
One of the “huge wins” on Bear Street, Enns said, is that it is accessible for people with varying degrees of mobility.
“It's designed without a curb, which might sound very small, but it's actually a huge step for allowing people to move throughout the space without any accessibility barriers,” he said, adding custom benches for wheelchair access is another feather in the cap of the project.
Opportunities abound for outdoor festivals, concerts and events in the space, with speaker wiring through the light poles and a central public fireplace to gather around.
The other attraction unveiled Wednesday morning, the Art in Nature Trail, is an accessible stretch along forest trails on both sides of the Bow River in Banff that will host 30 wellness-inspired art installations by 20 Alberta artists until Sept. 6.
“We wanted to encourage people to get out of downtown Banff and to get out into nature. We know from research that coming out of COVID, people want to get outdoors and reconnect with nature, and there is a real healing power in that,” said David Matyz, director of events and programming at Banff and Lake Louise Tourism. “We also wanted to support our local art scene through visual artists and through musicians this summer.”