Car-free streets in downtown Montreal took ‘political guts.’ Can Toronto do the same?

The irony being, of course that a true "conservative" that cleaved to the values they claim to care about would absolutely want this kind of car-light/car-free downtown.

Time and time again, complete streets and walkable cities are shown to save huge money on the city budget. They cost so much less to maintain and they boost economic productivity so much. The return on investment is just immense compared to car-intensive infrastructure. There's a reason a city like Houston has something like double the per capita spend on transportation of a city like NYC in spite of NYC's massive subway system and there's a reason NYC has something like double the per capita spend on transportation to Amsterdam with its vast networks of bike paths and trains. Car-intensive infrastructure is crazy expensive to maintain. It's unfrugal madness.

And for the non-financial side, car-intensive civic design still doesn't qualify as "conservative". Having car-intensive design requires a huge, top-down approach to urban planning where the city tries to plan every aspect of its citizens lives. Plan for them and fit them into figurative boxes in order to make the literal boxes practical to use. It's practically authoritarian. It's a violation of the traditional values of cities which grew slowly and organically, adapting to the changing needs of their citizens through work done typically by those very citizens' hands.

Switching urban planning models to a car-first approach led to a lot of the other problems of modern cities, including the fact that small-scale/neighborhood developers have been all but run out of business by huge outsider development firms that refuse to build anything other than huge exurban sub-developments and luxury condos. Conservatives should be there to resist and reject this total upending of normal development of society, but they make money off of it so stay mum.

Agreed, I was visiting earlier in August and it was such a pleasant experience walking around the city in general but especially the pedestrian only roads. The ones they have implemented in Vancouver aren't nearly as lively and nice. Especially with our new mayor and council essentially just paying lip service to the concept this summer.

If the sorry state of city finances and infrastructure are a problem and priority, then building and maintaining pedestrian, bike, and rail infrastructure are potential solutions.

Take a look at this study detailing the cost benefit analysis of bike infrastructure in Portland, Oregon. Millions of dollars can be saved. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/43289/8/Gotschi1.pdf

Another study concluded that “creating or improving active travel facilities generally has positive or non-significant economic impacts on retail and food service businesses abutting or within a short distance of the facilities”. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849

“Building a new roadway for automobiles can cost tens of millions of dollars to construct, and many of the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects and facilities are extremely low-cost in comparison. This infrastructure can also serve to improve safety for all road users, while also promoting healthier lifestyles through more bicycling and walking.” https://www.pedbikeinfo.org/cms/downloads/Countermeasure Costs_Report_Nov20131.pdf

I thought that's where they were headed on 21st Street and then on 2nd Avenue. Then they went backwards, at least on 21st. I think it was supposed to be a pedestrian mall, but it ended up being a parking mall, whatever that is.

There’s good reason to be cautious. These don’t always work well, and security can become an issue. Changing the built environment to support safe and active public spaces is challenging.

It would be great to know what factors make a pedestrian mall in a downtown core work well over the long haul and which don’t.

In the 1970s, several Canadian cities emulated European ones and created pedestrian spaces in their cores. Vancouver had a good length of Granville ‘theatre row’ closed for decades and Ottawa had Rideau closed to all but public transit. A great deal of infrastructure investment was made to make them appealing pedestrian spaces. Ottawa still has Sparks street completely vehicle free in the Parliamentary precinct.

Both Granville and Rideau were eventually reopened to traffic after they became crime focal points. Both were places women felt safe to walk on in the evening in the late 70s and early 80s, but by the 90s many pedestrians avoided them during the day and businesses left, replaced by boarded up storefronts.

All to say, not such a simple public good question as some are presenting here.

its new

Only if you ignore the >100 years during which Toronto existed before cars. Downtown areas do not benefit from car traffic, the more inner roads that can be converted to walking/biking/bus/streetcar only use the better.

Do not want to try because the people don't want to give up the rural life, you mean.

Originally cities were built to free the people from having to use any form of transportation beyond their own two feet. They have slowly transitioned into wannabe rural areas because people have become increasingly enamoured with the idea of living like farmers, needing to get into a vehicle every time they go to do something.

"Pedestrian streets" are not really "new", it's just something that we as North Americans have forgotten about.

We see large Walmart parking lots as normal and 6 lane "strodes" as nothing weird in cities and suburbs.

Tu peux.

I wouldn’t call it a ‘trial’.

It was in place for a couple of decades. Agreed that it failed in the end, as did Rideau street in Ottawa.

Can Toronto become worse?