Sparks Street

[acottawa]

The problem is Sparks street shares almost no characteristics with the world's successful pedestrian streets
1. It is in an office area rather than a retail, entertainment or residential area (so it is hardly surprising it attracts businesses catering to daytime office workers that close at 5:00pm).
2. It connects an empty, windswept plaza to a cliff (in Europe most of these streets connect railway stations to market squares - even William Street gets a lot of traffic linking the Rideau Centre to Byward Market).
3. There is not a single driver of pedestrian traffic (no museum, shopping centre, transit facility, entertainment facility).

To me all the various schemes to revitalize sparks street are doomed to failure because nothing changes the fundamentals, so you might as well allow bicycles, cars, parking, etc. along major parts of the street.