Everyone is aware that I have a strong preference for wider sidewalks. I would like there to be wide sidewalks everywhere and especially in the downtown areas of cities and the surrounding urban centres. Last August, I wrote an article on “How to make a bad sidewalk.” The impetus for that article was a brand new sidewalk outside of the 989 project along Johnson Street in Harris Green. For whatever reason, the city put in a suburban sized sidewalk next to a massive boulevard of grass. At the time, I repeated the widely held view that two wheel chairs should be able to pass each other easily along the sidewalk. The fix at this location is easy just remove some (not all) of the grassy boulevard and make more sidewalk. Unfortunately, it is not as easy to make this type of fix in other locations, especially our developed urban villages like North Park Village, James Bay Village and Oak Bay Village.

The impetus for this article now, was my experience picking up a cake for my son’s birthday last weekend from Patisserie Daniel in North Park Village (Really one of the best bakeries in the city!) I did share this experience on Twitter however here it is in long form. As we are all getting used to, I had to line up with enough space between me and the person in front of me, this is easy to do in most places as a line simply forms. The problem in North Park Village is that the sidewalks themselves are very narrow, so while in the line you may easily give enough space to the person in-front and behind you, there is no way to give the two metres of space to those that are just walking down the sidewalk, you can’t even give half that space. The City responded to my tweet saying that North Park was in the plan to receive the temporary extra space like James Bay had but this has not occurred yet.

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What the City did in James Bay, is needed in many other places in the city right now, not just because of a transmittable disease and not just temporarily. In the James Bay example, the City simply removed the parking lane from the village and placed temporary pylons along the travel to demarcate it. We are seeing this happening in many place in the world right now (Vancouver, Milan, New York, Paris… There are plans almost everywhere). The City of Victoria has its temporary plan under construction, but has not implemented a lot of it.

Going back to the North Park Village example, while I recognise that Cook Street is an arterial road and therefore some need to make room for cars; through the Village there are currently five lanes devoted to vehicles. This amount of space is just not needed. Two of the lanes are parking which seems important for a neighbourhood centre but this is not entirely true for two reasons: 1.There is a lot of parking nearby, it is just not available and, 2. Neighbourhood centres will actually attract more local business when they are more pedestrian friendly (they will actually attract people from far away just because it is a pleasant place to visit, whether parking is easy to find or not.)

My first point is likely to make some people upset, but I think that the city should actually get rid of all “Residential Parking Only” areas in the whole city, but more importantly, it should do it now for all neighbourhood centres like James Bay Village or North Park Village. Just to be very clear that does not mean I think that the space along those residential streets should not have parking. Those streets just should not have parking reserved only for the residents of the street. The streets are owned by all Victorians, so I am not even sure how we were convinced to allow this type of theft of a public good in the first place. In my opinion this could be easily improved by moving all streets to a blanket timed parking of 2 hrs near urban centres and 4 hrs in general residential areas. If you need to park a car on street for a longer period because you live there and it won’t fit in your driveway or you don’t have a driveway, then you buy a parking permit from the City. This could be done with an app so that there would be no need to go into City Hall. The funds from this parking could go back into road and trail maintenance. In a place like North Park Village, you could easily remove the street parking and widen the sidewalks and encourage people to park along the side streets like Pembroke, North Park, Grant and Balmoral. This is generally lots of parking available here and with a timed turnover required tied in with a disincentive to have people leave cars on the street that could be parked elsewhere, there would be sufficient for those that need to park and visit the bakery or liquor store while significantly improving the public realm experience.

The second reason that parking is not needed as much as perceived in the urban villages is that there remains a strong belief that the economic prosperity of any place in the city is tied directly to the ability to easily drive to it and park there. This is why we still don’t have a pedestrian only section of Government Street, even in the middle of the summer. The best shopping areas are those that are the most pedestrian friendly, not those that are the easiest to park at, just look at Lo Jo in Victoria or Robson in Vancouver, both nearly impossible to park along and yet at least pre-COVID were bustling shopping centres. Now moving into a post-COVID world, we will need that space to ensure the viability of any brick and mortar shopping areas. The thing is, the people that actually use our urban villages the most are those that live walking or cycling distance to them and they will use them more if they can shop safely and enjoyably because the public realm is built with them in mind, not providing convenience for a the small minority of business that arrives by car to park in that space right in front. Also for those that still do arrive by car and park on a side street? They might walk by three or four more stores that they hadn’t before when they parked out front, exposing them to other great shopping options. Buy a bicycle at North Park Bike Shop but realise that an ice cream sandwich from Cold Comfort is delicious or that Castle has so much more than just lumber.

Right now we could take the leap and start to see what our urban villages could look like if we marked off the parking and pair it with the removal of residential only parking for the blocks nearby. For the short-term maybe not charge for the vehicle permit for residents and instead allow them to register them for free with proof of residency. What is clear is that we need to do this now for the safety of people and to ensure the economic vitality of our neighbour villages. Hopefully we will see the City take this up in a meaningful way in the short-term and with some planning for the long-term.

I would love to know what you think about this or maybe other ways we can make space for people in our neighbourhood centres. Also how do you think we can best help our amazing Victorian stores? Leave a comment below!