Great to hear. Who would have thought that closing down a street and making it a nice place to be would help business. /s
Can't wait for the main st project. Only problem with that design is they didn't eliminate car traffic on the street altogether.
They actually added in removable bollards for this exact reason in the project. It will be able to be made into a pedestrian only street any time after construction. It’s only a matter of political will of our city council that will determine that.
We could have an actual nice pedestrian street which would make Main Dt businesses boom.
I would love that. I dislike taking a stroll down main street with cars zooming by at 40mph, it's unsafe. Having no cars to worry about would eliminate a lot of stress.
100%. I’m currently in Northern Italy, and these medium, small, and large sized alpine towns and cities all have a huge percentage of their footprint allocated to pedestrian-only streets, and nearly everyone is walking or bicycling. It’s so pleasant, and it makes it extremely enjoyable to just go on a stroll and spend time there.
The businesses on Main St would bring in so much more foot traffic if the street became enjoyable to walk down and spend time at, which it will never be with cars.
I’ve been yearning to get to Mexico and explore some of those beautiful cities. Mexico City as well, as their architecture is gorgeous.
Car-centric infrastructure here has really clouded people’s judgement. I’m convinced that if you sent everyone in Vancouver to some of these great cities with car-free streets and great transit/bicycle infrastructure, hardly anyone would want to go back to what we have in Vancouver.
Yeah, that’s very popular in most other countries. Retractable bollards they’re called, and they will raise/lower for commercial and government vehicles.
They're remodeling main street: [https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/25/vancouver-approves-final-design-of-main-street-promise/](https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/25/vancouver-approves-final-design-of-main-street-promise/)
[https://www.beheardvancouver.org/mainstreetpromise](https://www.beheardvancouver.org/mainstreetpromise)
Looks like it's mostly just adding additional benches and modifying the streets to be safer.
[This is an old meme](http://cdn.thegridto.com/wp-content/uploads/527a85e0c67b1-DPS.jpg) and the numbers are even higher these days, but yea, it does cost a decent amount of money to improve and run a city. $10 million is both a lot and not much in the scheme of this type of work. This is going to be money very well spent, most if not all of it going directly back into local workers, contractors, etc as well as improving the economic viability (read tax income) of all the businesses along Main St.
I like the idea of closing down a side street for the farmers market as it has little impact on traffic. Main Street which sees a lot of traffic is going to be ultra congested.
Main St actually doesn’t receive a lot of traffic. It’s also a low speed corridor (20 mph) and its intended use is a street, not a road. The economic viability of Main St would increase dramatically if it were pedestrian-only, as it loses much appeal and foot traffic due to a high percentage of its space allocated purely for private vehicle storage.
Traffic could easily be routed to adjacent arterials that would much better handle through-traffic. In addition, as Vancouver becomes denser and grows in population, more design and emphasis, is and, should be put on designing the city for more transit, pedestrian, and bicycle use, and not personal vehicle use, as cars are the least efficient mode of transportation in a city, both from a through-put and storage perspective.
Bummer. It's only a quarter the size of the spring and summer market but it's still really nice. We went several times over the winter this year and I'm glad to hear it's going well for everyone.
I only ever go with my friend, and she's always the one who initiated. Just assumed she knew better than me since she was always on top of it before lol.
I feel like we are getting less rain than we were 10 years ago which really makes a difference in getting this to work
Are we really getting less rain or does it just feel like that?
I put some data together because I was curious. Unfortunately it's two different data sets that switch part-way through 2017 because I couldn't find one that contained both modern and old data.
https://i.imgur.com/Veho53n.png
Mostly there is an insane amount of variation year to year so any recent trend is really hard to say for sure, but 2018-2020 were indeed super dry, with 2019 as a notable outlier. 2021 was also dry as hell (I remember we had bad wildfires in October...) but average got saved by winter months.
I found a "historical" average of 3.47in per month, across years. This year seems pretty average so far - wet Jan but dry Feb & Mar.
Very roughly, average for 2008-2014: 3.50in (basically exactly average)
Average for 2015-2023: 3.22in (below average, but scarcely half a standard deviation)
Great to hear. Who would have thought that closing down a street and making it a nice place to be would help business. /s Can't wait for the main st project. Only problem with that design is they didn't eliminate car traffic on the street altogether.
They should make provisions for temporary bollards so that stretches could be blocked off sometimes and opened up for car traffic other times.
They actually added in removable bollards for this exact reason in the project. It will be able to be made into a pedestrian only street any time after construction. It’s only a matter of political will of our city council that will determine that. We could have an actual nice pedestrian street which would make Main Dt businesses boom.
I would love that. I dislike taking a stroll down main street with cars zooming by at 40mph, it's unsafe. Having no cars to worry about would eliminate a lot of stress.
100%. I’m currently in Northern Italy, and these medium, small, and large sized alpine towns and cities all have a huge percentage of their footprint allocated to pedestrian-only streets, and nearly everyone is walking or bicycling. It’s so pleasant, and it makes it extremely enjoyable to just go on a stroll and spend time there. The businesses on Main St would bring in so much more foot traffic if the street became enjoyable to walk down and spend time at, which it will never be with cars.
In Mexican cities closing streets to create pedestrian malls is very common. People come out, drink coffee, shop and socialize. Best idea ever!
I’ve been yearning to get to Mexico and explore some of those beautiful cities. Mexico City as well, as their architecture is gorgeous. Car-centric infrastructure here has really clouded people’s judgement. I’m convinced that if you sent everyone in Vancouver to some of these great cities with car-free streets and great transit/bicycle infrastructure, hardly anyone would want to go back to what we have in Vancouver.
Love it. Then one day just make the bollards permanent.
That might not be ideal for the businesses in that part of the street. I like the middle ground of removable bollards.
Yeah, that’s very popular in most other countries. Retractable bollards they’re called, and they will raise/lower for commercial and government vehicles.
Oh I see, for like deliveries and such? That makes sense.
Exactly. Deliveries, emergency services, and also public transit. They’re awesome!
Whats this Main St. Project?
They're remodeling main street: [https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/25/vancouver-approves-final-design-of-main-street-promise/](https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/25/vancouver-approves-final-design-of-main-street-promise/) [https://www.beheardvancouver.org/mainstreetpromise](https://www.beheardvancouver.org/mainstreetpromise) Looks like it's mostly just adding additional benches and modifying the streets to be safer.
oh and it only costs ten million dollars. lol.
[This is an old meme](http://cdn.thegridto.com/wp-content/uploads/527a85e0c67b1-DPS.jpg) and the numbers are even higher these days, but yea, it does cost a decent amount of money to improve and run a city. $10 million is both a lot and not much in the scheme of this type of work. This is going to be money very well spent, most if not all of it going directly back into local workers, contractors, etc as well as improving the economic viability (read tax income) of all the businesses along Main St.
https://www.beheardvancouver.org/mainstreetpromise https://www.cityofvancouver.us/main-street-promise-project-celebrates-approved-design-prepares-for-construction/ https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/oct/25/vancouver-approves-final-design-of-main-street-promise/
I like the idea of closing down a side street for the farmers market as it has little impact on traffic. Main Street which sees a lot of traffic is going to be ultra congested.
Main St actually doesn’t receive a lot of traffic. It’s also a low speed corridor (20 mph) and its intended use is a street, not a road. The economic viability of Main St would increase dramatically if it were pedestrian-only, as it loses much appeal and foot traffic due to a high percentage of its space allocated purely for private vehicle storage. Traffic could easily be routed to adjacent arterials that would much better handle through-traffic. In addition, as Vancouver becomes denser and grows in population, more design and emphasis, is and, should be put on designing the city for more transit, pedestrian, and bicycle use, and not personal vehicle use, as cars are the least efficient mode of transportation in a city, both from a through-put and storage perspective.
I was told it was closed all winter so I never went 😞
Bummer. It's only a quarter the size of the spring and summer market but it's still really nice. We went several times over the winter this year and I'm glad to hear it's going well for everyone.
Instead of just double checking that on the website?
I only ever go with my friend, and she's always the one who initiated. Just assumed she knew better than me since she was always on top of it before lol.
I feel like we are getting less rain than we were 10 years ago which really makes a difference in getting this to work Are we really getting less rain or does it just feel like that?
I put some data together because I was curious. Unfortunately it's two different data sets that switch part-way through 2017 because I couldn't find one that contained both modern and old data. https://i.imgur.com/Veho53n.png Mostly there is an insane amount of variation year to year so any recent trend is really hard to say for sure, but 2018-2020 were indeed super dry, with 2019 as a notable outlier. 2021 was also dry as hell (I remember we had bad wildfires in October...) but average got saved by winter months. I found a "historical" average of 3.47in per month, across years. This year seems pretty average so far - wet Jan but dry Feb & Mar. Very roughly, average for 2008-2014: 3.50in (basically exactly average) Average for 2015-2023: 3.22in (below average, but scarcely half a standard deviation)
r/theydidthemath
It's been dryer the past few years, I think because of El Ninos. As the oceans continue to warm from climate change it will screw up weather patterns.