Really should Calgary’s 17th Avenue S.W. be shut to car or truck traffic and open up only to pedestrians at various situations?
Which is a issue currently being pondered by the 17th Avenue Business enterprise Enhancement Area (BIA), one particular of the city’s 15 BIAs, which are groups of enterprises that function collectively on a variety of opportunity enhancements to neighbourhoods.
The question is remaining posed in an on the web survey that asks respondents no matter whether they’d help seeing the well-liked avenue closed to visitors all summer months, for summer time weekends, summertime weekdays, or not at all.
Tulene Steiestol, executive director of the 17th Avenue BIA, said this signifies the very first phase in a system that could just take decades.
But Steiestol reported the firm is eyeing equivalent projects that have been profitable in neighbourhoods like Inglewood and Fourth Road S.W., which hosts the yearly Lilac Festival.
“There is certainly been those requests to us to say, ‘Hey, would you fellas ever contemplate, as a company enhancement place, shutting down the road?'” Steiestol claimed.
“You can find loads of examples, particularly out of Japanese Canada, where by this has really labored.”
Inglewood has been running Car Free of charge Sunday for the previous two decades, closing Ninth Avenue S.E. between 11th Avenue and 14th Street to targeted visitors each individual Sunday in August for a chunk of the working day.
Dan Allard with the Inglewood BIA mentioned responses has always been positive to that initiative, but he noted the initiative is being slash down to a one working day in September this yr.
“It was just that we failed to have the money to distribute it out throughout your 4 or five Sundays,” Allard stated.
Coun. Courtney Walcott said a temporary road closure program is anything the city could think about helping with as Calgary tries to shift absent from a reliance on vehicles.
“We have to begin thinking of how we can produce extra spaces for people,” said the Ward 8 agent.
The 17th Avenue BIA study is nevertheless working on line. In an email, Steiestol said responses to the study are nevertheless coming in, so the firm may well retain it open till the stop of the month — though no difficult deadline is in put.