So Saint John has unveiled it's own street "opening" scheme (they've chosen to frame it as
opening the streets to alternate uses rather than just
closing them to vehicles). The proposal is to have weekend street closures that rotate between 3 different sets of Uptown streets from July through September. See map below, from the
staff presentation in Monday's Council agenda:
The street rotation will be as follows:
A - Canterbury from King to Princess; Grannan from Rogue Alley to Prince William
B - Prince William from Duke to Grannan; Princess from Canterbury to Water
C - Germain from Princess to Grannan; Grannan from Germain to Rogue Alley
The City has also proposed the
permanent closure of South Market Street to vehicle traffic, creating a fully pedestrianized street adjacent to the City Market.
In addition to the above, there are proposals to:
-Add several 15-minute on-street parking spaces for pick-up/drop-off purposes (the blue car markers on the map above). The idea is not only to facilitate access to the rotating pedestrian streets when they're up and running but also to help Uptown businesses conduct curbside pick-up services and the like, and
- Create a more streamlined community street closure application process that will cut down on the lead time required for community groups to request a street closure for their event.
I think this is a good approach to testing the waters for pedestrianized streets in the Uptown. The rotating nature of street openings allows for the City and businesses to experiment with what works and where it might work, as well as backtrack if things don't work out as expected. Limiting them to Friday evening through Sunday morning allows businesses who prefer the status quo to not be perpetually cut off. And South Market Street makes perfect sense to pedestrianize on a permanent basis since it opens up a lot of possibilities for the Market to have a greater outdoor presence.