It’s time to rethink Victoria’s planned rethink of Government Street, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily mean banning cars, says Mayor Lisa Helps.
Fresh from a trip to Heidelberg, Germany, where she was attending the International Conference on Climate Action, Helps has written on her blog about the street experience there.
“Their main street is about two or three kilometres long and it’s mostly for people, but cars can still drive there as needed,” said Helps, who wrote on her blog: “It was remarkable to see people in cars, people riding bikes, people walking, people drinking beer, all sharing the same space so gracefully.”
Her photos show a town square crowded with people sitting at restaurant tables while cyclists, cars and pedestrians share the street.
In Heidelberg, cars aren’t the priority — people are, Helps says. “If I squinted hard, I could see the future of Government Street and maybe the rest of old town, too.
“I was actually shocked when I was sitting there. It was if I had scripted it. These two young boys walking down the street kicking a soccer ball. A few minutes later, a car comes, then a woman walks across the street with a beer.”
In her blog, Helps talks of returning to the same city square at 9 a.m. on a Saturday.
“I expected to find tables full of people drinking their morning coffee. What I saw, instead, where the night before had been a crowded street and square full of Friday evening revelers, were parked cars! The town square and streets surrounding it could even function as a surface parking lot if needed,” she says.
Helps says the city doesn’t need to close Government Street to traffic — a 2020-2021 action item in council’s strategic plan. Instead, it should consider simply making it more of a people place.
“You do it with tables and chairs basically, that’s the answer,” Helps says.
“Really you just do it by making it more convenient for people to walk than it is for cars to drive.”
There have been calls since the 1970s to turn Government Street — one of the city’s main tourist strips — into a pedestrian mall.
Councillors again this year decided to make up to $25,000 available to support more trial closures to vehicles similar to those undertaken last summer, when a section of Government Street was closed to vehicles on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.
Not everyone is on board with the idea. Some argue that more than 2.7 million pedestrians already use the street every year and cars bring customers.
Some have also expressed worries that without programmed activities, a pedestrian mall could become a magnet for drug dealers, vagrants and panhandlers.
Helps concludes her blog by saying streets are for people.
“They are for kids kicking soccer balls and grandmothers bending down tenderly to their grandchildren without any thought of being run down by a car. Streets are for commerce — for the exchange of goods and services, for afternoon coffee, evening beer, for sharing a meal. Streets are for connection and joy.”
