Something we don’t really understand is why Montreal pulls the plug on its wildly successful
pedestrian streets so early, especially the extremely popular Mont-Royal Avenue, which starts
to be taken down in early September. We see why the city’s cold and snowy winters are a particular
challenge for pedestrian streets, requiring some creativity and planning if they’re going
to work year round, but September and October are pretty nice and they seem like a no-brainer.
But as we say goodbye to these lively linear parks, what exactly makes a good pedestrian
street? Once you take cars off the road, how do you make the best of the space?
Pedestrian streets really seem to thrive when lots of people live nearby within easy walking
distance. In our last apartment, we lived right beside Mont-Royal Avenue and walked on it pretty
much every single day, while Wellington Street further away was a destination we
visited maybe once a month. People coming from farther away definitely matter too,
but in our experience locals are the lifeblood of a pedestrian street,
and that requires lots of housing nearby. Aside from a couple downtown, our city’s
pedestrian streets are all in dense residential neighbourhoods with lots of people to enjoy them.
The pedestrian streets we gravitate the most to are the longer ones,
because they just have more to see and do, whether you’re going for a walk or looking for food.
The Globe & Mail says that Mont-Royal Avenue might be the longest pedestrian street in the world at
double the length of Copenhagen’s Strøget. That would be a little surprising — there must be
something out there that’s longer, right? — but being the longest in the city definitely helps its
popularity. Some of the longer pedestrian streets have maps to show intersections and attractions.
With that said, shorter pedestrian streets can be pretty compelling too,
especially when there’s a place in particular that you know you want to go.
Most types of shopping are better on a pedestrian street, but the biggest commercial draws tend
to be cafes, bars, restaurants, and ice cream shops. On a nice summer day it’s just so much
more pleasant to eat outside with people walking by and cycling past than enduring the noise,
smell, and danger of car traffic zooming by. We made the mistake of meeting up with some friends
on a patio by a different street that still had traffic this summer and it was actually a shock
how much more stressful it was and how much harder it was to hear the people you’re sitting with.
It’s one thing to close a street to cars to allow restaurants to expand
but the very best pedestrian streets are the ones that become destinations
in themselves that draw you in even if you aren’t planning to spend money.
Wellington has a whole line-up of creative events, from New Orleans jazz shows to historical
reenactments, comedy nights, and marionette shows. Sainte-Catherine East has mini golf, a
big chess board, table tennis, and music. Ontario Street has picnic spaces, swings, a bouncy castle,
and… Luigi?. Mont-Royal has workshops for families on gardening and agriculture.
Another feature we really like is the workspaces with wifi that you can find at some of these
sites. You can bring your laptop for a few hours as an alternative to working at a cafe.
There’s just so much creativity and thought put into these streets.
One of the most important parts of a pedestrian street is public seating
that’s separate from restaurant patios. People want to sit down to chat, rest,
eat some take-out food that they bought, or just enjoy the lively atmosphere of
the street. It’s extra nice when there’s some creativity, like swings or ski lift
chairs. Restaurant patios are great but you shouldn’t need to buy something to sit down.
Shade is also essential; despite what you might have heard from NIMBYs denouncing the threat of
shadows, shade is really nice on a hot summer day. No shade. Parks usually have both shade
and seating, so a really winning combination is when you have parks alongside pedestrian streets.
Pedestrian streets have advantages for people with disabilities but also accessibility
challenges to solve. Taking cars off the street opens up a lot of space for people
using mobility scooters and wheelchairs, instead of cramming them onto a busy and
often bumpy sidewalk. But closing streets to traffic creates detours on bus routes, meaning
less direct bus rides for seniors and others with reduced mobility who rely on those buses.
We actually kind of like the idea of a transit mall where a street is pedestrianized except
for maybe trams running through, although that’s a much bigger project that might be hard to balance
with the street being a destination with seating and events, unless we were talking about wider
streets than what we have here. There’s also the Metro to get to these pedestrian streets but as an
older system, the Montreal Metro’s accessibility isn’t great. The newly-renovated Mont-Royal
station now has elevators but lots of other pedestrian streets don’t have an accessible metro
station nearby. That situation obviously needs to be improved. One cool accessibility program
you see though on some of the longer pedestrian streets is a free bike taxi shuttle service.
We’ve also seen access ramps added to better transition between the road and the sidewalk.
This might come as a surprise, but we don’t find asphalt and pavement to be
the most aesthetically pleasing environments that humans have created. You kind of need
to spruce them up. People like nature, so incorporating greenery and gardens helps
a lot to make them feel more welcoming and relaxing. Art is a good addition too,
whether it’s art exhibits, street murals, or poetry on the street surface.
One of the first questions people ask about pedestrian streets is how businesses get
deliveries. They have different policies but Wellington for example allows delivery trucks
and vans in the mornings before 11:30 am. Cargo bikes are allowed at any time,
and yes, cargo bike deliveries aren’t uncommon in Montreal. On top of this, lots of businesses like
this provincial liquor store take deliveries through the back alley, just like in the days
of prohibition. You can find other vehicles on these streets too, from utility trucks to garbage
collection. “Car-free” doesn’t mean closing the street to maintenance, deliveries, and servicing.
Should pedestrian streets include bikes? Different ones have different policies here. Some are “slow
zones” that allow people to ride their bike but with a request to go slow. Some allowed cyclists
but only on off-peak hours. Other streets didn’t allow bikes to be ridden at all. While walking
here ourselves we’ve had mostly good experiences with cyclists so we lean towards allowing them but
we’ve seen enough exceptions that we understand where the concern comes from. We will say though
that while it’s probably a good thing to let different streets take different policies,
for cyclists it can be a little confusing because you don’t necessarily expect
different rules. We have seen them enforced by police who happened to be around, though.
One area where Montreal’s pedestrian streets feel a little rag tag compared to what you
find in Europe is that most of them aren’t permanent. They’re regular streets that get
converted in the summer. This means we don’t get to enjoy them year round, but it also changes what
they look like and how they function, even when pedestrianized. Sidewalk ramps for wheelchairs
and mobility scooters are only necessary because we have this distinction between the road and
the sidewalk. Ramps wouldn’t be needed if the street was permanently designed for pedestrians.
Also, permanently-pedestrianized streets just look much nicer, frankly. We actually do understand why
Montreal’s pedestrian streets aren’t car-free year round — not to say that they couldn’t succeed,
many of them probably could, but unlike simple extensions through October, winter really is
a different beast that requires planning and creativity when it comes to design, programming,
and attractions. Outdoor dining isn’t as relevant in winter, and plants and greenery don’t exactly
work as decorations. There’s also snow clearing and enacting permanent changes to bus routes.
All of this stuff takes time to figure out. But regardless of the reasons or challenges, permanent
car-free streets designed for pedestrians do tend to be nicer in a few key ways, from aesthetics to
accessibility. In recent news though, after a petition got more than 3,000 signatures,
Wellington Street is going into consultations for a potential year-round pedestrianization.
Thanks for watching through to the end of the video. If you have a street in
your city that should be pedestrianized, or that has been pedestrianized that you
think is a good model for other cities, let us know in the comments. For everyone else,
don’t forget to bike and subscribe, and a special thanks to our supporters on Patreon.