The following article appeared in the November 11 edition of the Guelph Mercury:
A growing number of downtown merchants want to leave the light on for potential customers.
Downtown Guelph Business Association board member Lorenz Calcagno spoke to about 60 people Tuesday at the Alma Gallery about a plan to alter traffic signals and patterns, all in an effort to increase downtown traffic.
Lorenz — and several others — believe the pedestrian-friendly “scramble” style traffic lights, which simultaneously stop vehicular traffic in all directions and encourage cross-walking in all directions at St. Georges Square, drive potential customers around the downtown core and into residential neighbourhoods away from businesses.
“I think it’s an interesting concept,” said the city’s manager of economic development and tourism, Peter Cartwright, who attended the meeting. “Personally, I don’t like driving down Wyndham because of that light.”
Tom Dowd, who is a huge proponent of downtown Guelph and owns the Alma Gallery and a yoga studio, also dislikes the light.
“Everyone downtown talks about that stoplight. That light kills a lot of traffic,” he said. “I always joke that it’s the only time I get to read. I can pull out a novel and read a few pages while I wait.”
Calcagno said he’d like the city to reprogram the lights by the end of the year. He also wants traffic from Highway 24, also known as Wellington Street, rerouted up Wyndham Street and into the core — the way traffic flowed before changes were made in 1977. That year, Highway 24 was routed around the east of the city, between the river and the city’s eastern edge, to Eramosa Road.
Calcagno also noted that the bypass around Brantford’s downtown all but killed it. A slide show depicted decrepit vacant buildings in decay. And Calcagno said Georgetown’s downtown underwent a moot massive makeover because traffic from Highway 7 remains bypassed around the core.
“We’ve killed our downtown,” Dowd said, noting that several buildings remain vacant on the site of the proposed downtown library.
“We need to make our downtown busy,” Calcagno said.
He cited Erin, a town “in the middle of nowhere,” with no tourist destination and no bypass, has a vibrant downtown — and, according to Calcagno, rent three times as costly as Guelph’s — because traffic is force-fed through the core. He said Stratford, Kingston and Eugene, Ore., are similarly successful for the same reason.
“It only makes sense. The more traffic you get, the better business will be,” Dowd said. “And these are things we can readily change.”
Calcagno spoke with 18 different people, groups or organizations in preparation for his presentation, which drew a rousing round of applause.
“Now, we have to stop talking and start doing,” Dowd said. “We need to come together as a community and as a city.”
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6 Comments
November 12, 2009 at 10:56 pm
This is infuriating.
“It only makes sense. The more traffic you get, the better business will be,” Dowd said. “And these are things we can readily change.”
This person doesn’t know the first thing about urban development, the health of cities, or consumer behaviour. Our downtown will suffer if this ignorant advice is followed.
Would it kill the mercury to actually interview an urban planner?
November 28, 2009 at 11:59 am
perhaps listening to urban planners is what’s killing so many downtowns?
if you had only been at Lorenz’s presentation, you would have heard hard facts and seen obvious evidence of historical patterns that have caused the demise of so many downtowns. The scramble crosswalk at St. Georges Square provides no benefit to pedestrians, yet frustrates vehicular traffic to the point of avoiding it all together. People naturally think that improving downtown for pedestrians is key, but evidence all points to the fact that vehicular traffic is necessary for business to survive.
Guelph does a lot of things to encourage ‘green’ choices, which is commendable, but forcing people to not drive downtown doesnt prevent people from driving, it just prevents them from driving downtown. They will drive to the mall instead, and our downtown will die, then there will be nowhere for downtown residents to walk or bike to!!
Its time that we stopped following flawed logic and start looking at facts, before it’s too late.
Change the St. Georges intersection back to traditional programming, re-route hwy 24 back down wyndham, and lets make Guelph a destination downtown!
November 29, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I don’t drive a car, I live down town. Having said that, I can’t see why someone who drives a car would go down town when they can go to a mall.
It strikes me that any development plan for the down town would have to be based upon people who live there and walk to stores; or people who take buses.
I like the scramble cross walk because it speeds up the time it takes me to walk through the core. But I sometimes ride my bike and simply by pass it by going onto Gordon. Surely anyone with a car can do the same thing.
I simply cannot see how anyone would shop down town because they were driving through it and stopped on impulse, which seems to be the essence of the argument that Lorenz is making.
It strikes me that if you want people to shop down town people have to live there. And you are not going to get a lot of people living down town until you do something about the over concentration of bars, which leads to the crazy rowdiness there.
I think the long-term solution is to institute the barstool tax that Bob Bell has been suggesting, not getting rid of the pedestrian scramble.
November 30, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Well said, Bill. One of the example of a good downtown that this group uses is Erin. But Erin’s downtown is not successful because a main road runs through it. It is successful because it has unique shops and is in a walkable community. To make downtown Guelph work better, we need more people living downtown, and a more walkable environment.
Re the bars, I still think if they would just make last call an hour earlier, most of the problem would be solved. I get told that the City can’t do this, but I suspect they can.
December 1, 2009 at 9:42 am
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) is responsible for administering the Liquor Licence Act that covers most aspects of Ontario’s beverage alcohol laws.
http://www.agco.on.ca/en/b.alcohol/b.alcohol.html
The City of Guelph will be providing comment to the AGCO (see September FACS agenda http://guelph.ca/uploads/Council_and_Committees/FACS/facs_agenda_091409.pdf) regarding changes to the liquor licensing regulations.
A representative from the AGCO will be making a presentation to the Night Life Task Force in January regarding Risk Based Licensing and new rules around accountability on the part of liquor licensees.
December 1, 2009 at 2:32 pm
One suggestion that you might make to the AGCO is that they start to enforce their regulations vis-a-vis serving intoxicated customers. I see kids going downtown at 11:00pm chugging beers, vodka, etc. I also see them staggering home from the bars absolutely hammered. If some of the bars got fined so heavily that it was a real financial burden, then they might stop serving people who are already drunk.
I read a story about the “entertainment district” in Toronto that said the worst excesses were only stopped when the liquor inspectors started levying progressive fines that eventually put the worst offenders out of business. When was the last time a bar was put out of business in Guelph because of things like serving intoxicated patrons or flaunting the fire code?
If we have too many bars and a real problem of rowdiness, shouldn’t the best policy be to push the worst offenders out of business through enforcement?