Downtown Parking And The Fate Of Our Cities
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis, and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts, and business news in the region. Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor, based in Halifax.
You have got to feel for the businesses on and around Spring Garden Road.
For a good chunk of 2021, the street was completely torn up, and large parts of it were shut down, thanks to a streetscaping project.
Then, just a few months after the project finished, council rolled out a disastrous transit-only pilot project on the street. At the time, one business owner told Huddle’s Derek Montague the plan was “a grand experiment at the merchants’ expense.”
Now, Spring Garden-area businesses are staring down the possibility of their customers losing free parking on evenings and weekends. One businesses owner told Huddle she’s worried it will turn the area into a “ghost town.”
Spring Garden is often touted as the busiest shopping district east of Montreal. That means businesses on it are well-positioned to draw in tons of foot traffic.
But because the street is so important it’s also one of the first to draw the eye of city planners looking to implement their visions for the city.
The plight of Spring Garden-area businesses perfectly illustrates the tension at the heart of a growing city.
There’s a big push these days to create more walkable and vibrant cities. Planners aim to create environments that feel safe and comfortable to pedestrians and aren’t clogged with noise and pollution – cities that essentially feel a little more human.
Making that happen means enacting policies that discourage or punish drivers. That can mean narrowing streets or removing parking in favour of bike lanes. Some cities literally just charge a fee to drive in the downtown core.
Anyone who has been to an event like the Downtown Dartmouth Ice Festival knows how pleasant it can be to remove cars from urban centres. There are also a lot of compelling enviornmental reasons to discourage driving.
A lot of what the HRM is doing on Spring Garden is meant to discourage drivers in pursuit of that “more human city” ideal (although the parking fees are probably more about the massive financial crisis the city faces).
I’ll probably catch flak from some of our readers for saying this, but I am totally for this kind of planning.
I fully supported the Spring Garden streetscaping project. I think making the road transit-only is a great idea (if only the HRM hadn’t completely bungled the pilot project). And yes, I even support charging for parking on the weekends and evenings.
From my selfish point of view, I love the idea of a more walkable Halifax with fewer cars and better, faster transit.
I don’t live on the Halifax side of the harbour but I love taking the ferry over and strolling down Spring Garden, popping into a coffee shop, maybe buying a book. Whenever I’m there, I can’t help but think how great it would be if there weren’t cars zinging by me the entire time.
But what if I got my way? What if the city banned all traffic from Spring Garden, started charging cars to drive down Hollis, slapped a bike lane right in the middle of Barrington Street?
Business owners have warned us, loudly and repeatedly, what could happen if we push motorists out of the urban core. There are plenty of places to eat a meal or buy a coat around Dartmouth Crossing or the Halifax Shopping Centre. And if you don’t have to pay to park at those places, why would you head to Spring Garden?
The thing that I and people like me love about urban living so much is the vibrancy and variety. You won’t find a place like the Board Room Game Café or Inkwell Boutique in my small hometown.
Too many people take for granted that those cool small businesses will always exist in our city, so we don’t listen very hard when they tell us our utopian plans for the “Halifax of the Future” will hurt them.
But they are some of the main things making our city interesting. If we forget about them as we plan for the future, all our ideas about a walkable city won’t matter. No one will come downtown if all that’s left are beautiful sidewalks leading to empty storefronts.