Dundas pedestrian mall

[manny_santos]

There has been talk on and off over the past 50 years about making Dundas Street in the downtown core a pedestrian mall, not unlike Sparks Street in Ottawa's core.

The issue has come up again recently, especially with the expansion of Car Free Sundays. Part of the proposal includes moving public transit onto Queens Avenue and King Street.

Some businesses along Dundas are upset about this idea, saying this will take away from their businesses. Some have cited a pedestrian mall that supposedly existed on Dundas near Adelaide for about 30 years starting in the 1970s as their reason for not wanting to remove traffic from Dundas downtown. (I have never once found evidence of such a pedestrian mall having ever existing in that area, and I never remember that being there when I was younger.)

I just returned from a weekend in Ottawa, where I spent some time looking at Sparks Street and the composition of the businesses that line it. Some of the merchants on Dundas Street in London are right, they won't survive with a pedestrian mall. The types of businesses that are on Dundas now are not the types of businesses found in a pedestrian mall; rather, different types of businesses would be found. On Sparks Street in Ottawa, there are no payday loan sharks or pawn shops. There are nice restaurants with large patios right on the street's right-of-way. I loved it. And transit? OC Transpo's east-west routes are just a block away.

That said, we have several businesses and other establishments already on Dundas Street downtown that would be a good fit with a pedestrian mall. These include, but are not limited to, the John Labatt Centre, Kingsmills, Starbucks, Forest City Image Centre, Coffee Culture, Scot's Corner, and the Central Library. Add some nice restaurant patios to the area to existing and future restaurants, and the area could be a vibrant place people would want to visit. It would integrate well with the Covent Garden Market.

Thoughts? Comments?

(P.S. I am seriously considering the possibility of moving to Ottawa next year, even though I speak virtually no French.)