Can we pedestrianize Alberta's Main Streets? (w/ Chris Chiasson)

Confluence Media
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My podcast featuring Chris Chiasson has been released, talking about a variety of pedestrian safety and public realm issues, and the politics behind creating or maintaining great, walkable spaces.

Chris brings his experience working with the Cabbagetown Business Improvement Area in Toronto to these issues in Calgary. We talk about the role that local community organizations ideally play in uplifting activists, engaging, and organizing to make a better business environment.

Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

Summary

The Town of Banff will be dismantling and removing their incredibly popular pedestrian zone on Banff Ave after a 53% to 47% plebiscite result against continuing the summer activation.[1]

Starting as a petition raised earlier this year,[2] the town was bitterly divided as pedestrian and business advocates attempted to save the pedestrian zone, while the opposition brought a variety of cynical perspectives:[3]

From the lead organizers’ perspective—what Chris calls “pass-the-buck” democracy—to ‘rethink’ pedestrianization after neighbouring residential communities experienced redirected traffic flow.[4] To disinformation that the pedestrian zone poses a safety hazard in the case of emergency.[5]

In both cases… we know that cars are the real problem here, and that trains[6] are the real solution.

Things are, at least, not so heartbreaking in the rest of the Bow Valley.

Canmore is quickly turning into a case study for public realm improvement done right, with their pedestrian zone reported to have nearly 90% public support.[7] Chris, of course, has been hard at work here in Calgary to organize an Open Streets pilot for 17th Avenue SW.

As of posting, the Beltline Neighbourhoods Association’s survey is open for feedback,[8] with 17th Ave expected to be closed to most vehicle traffic in Summer 2025.
See also: 17th-ave

ActivateYYC is rebooting their Park(ing) Day program[9] and are currently receiving submissions for installations within the Kensington BIA on the September 20-22nd weekend!

aaand the City of Calgary will be engaging this fall about both the new Zoning Bylaw, and Street Manual.[10] The latter of which is mostly technical, but is expected to contain information that is important to successful implementation of pedestrian or cycling-friendly measures.

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  8. https://www.beltlineyyc.ca/17_ave_open_street ↩︎

  9. https://activateyyc.calgarycommunities.com/parking-day-2024/ ↩︎

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I absolutely loved this episode. Chris does an amazing job laying out the history of BIAs and how they work (before this I basically knew nothing about them). 10/10 guest speaker!

Banff Ave Pedestrianization:

It is a shame that we won’t be getting a pedestrianized main street in Banff for now. I do think there are some key differences that allow Canmore to succeed with this while Banff failed. We should take note of it in order to get more success stories like in Canmore.

For one, you guys did talk about how Canmore feels more like a “real town” - this makes sense by simply looking at the size of the two cities and the populations. Canmore has just less than double the population of Banff, and Canmore takes up more land area with a downtown grid while Banff is mostly situated around one road (Banff Ave).

You did touch on this but in order to win over the people who voted against Banff Ave pedestrianization, I think we need to have a productive conversation about how we mitigate/reduce the vehicle traffic (since residents understandably won’t want their streets being clogged with cars). Maybe promoting more parking on the periphery of Banff, clearly laying out which road would provide a detour to cross the Bow River, supporting the new CABR proposal, and whatever else.

I just can’t help thinking that some of the opposition to the pedestrianization comes from some Banff residents framing the debate as an outsider/tourist vs local priority issue. Thoughtful and respectful communication can help reduce that kind of framing and win over some people imo.

Anyways, I just wanted to touch on the Banff Ave pedestrianization debate a bit. Especially after my recent experience of the pedestrianization of downtown Canmore (had a great time even with the hail storm).

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