Two ACTUAL problems with downtown PG.

Stroads, parking, and what we can learn from Farmers' Markets.

Hot off the heels of last week’s newsletter doing its best to articulate the difference between a “societal level crisis” and a “downtown problem”, I was thinking it might be nice to actually talk about some real downtown problems.

Before we begin, I just want to say REAL quick here that these problems are not the definitive problems with downtown. I’m not a cyclist. I don’t transit often. I don’t live downtown. I’m an able-bodied person. I point this out because you could see this list and mistake it for a list of THE THINGS DOWNTOWN SHOULD BE PRIORITIZING but this list is not that list. If you have that list, or a list you think is better than this list, I would love to read that list.

Until then, here’s this list.

1) Why are all the streets so wide and the sidewalks so darn skinny?

Strong Towns has actually given us the answer to this question: Prince George’s “streets” are a very common North American confused hybrid of street and road called a stroad. They don’t know if they’re for high speed, high volume traffic (roads) or if they’re streets (a place for pedestrians to engage with businesses/shops). The result is a dangerous (for both pedestrians and cars) ugly mess that feels crummy to walk on and crummy to drive on.

Real streets (not these dang stroads) are much narrower, and discourage high speed motorists to the point where most cars would be best served by going around unless they’re specifically looking to be on that road. There should be things like trees, benches, and big sidewalks - the kinds of things that make being a pedestrian really enjoyable!

A photo of 5th Ave in Valemount - an example of a proper Street.

And okay, I get that there were probably a lot of projections done in the 70’s and 80’s about what our downtown might one day become and with that came the need to plan accordingly but as we approach the year 2023, I’m wondering if we can acknowledge that Prince George didn’t become a Northern Vancouver. I think it might be time to consider some adjustments that will go a LONG way in making it feel safer and more walkable.

I’m not even going to ask for all of them to be trimmed in to ACTUAL streets - I do think there should be arteries that allow for slightly higher speeds and bus traffic but certainly we can all look at Dominion and gasp a collective collective gasp of disbelief. Have you ever seen 4 lanes worth of traffic for longer than 20 minutes?

If you’re at all interested in this concept of stroads and their plague but then how to fix it, you should watch this video.

2) What’s going on with parking?

Just a quick aside: Rylan is perhaps the best follow I can offer you for Prince George Twitter.

Rylan’s thread linked above does an exceptional job of outlining the core of this problem and in reference to this Strong Town article on the cost of too much parking, makes the point much better than I can. The main takeaway I can offer on this topic is that our municipal governments, our local businesses, and our citizens have internalized a lot of poor design choices in our cities to make us think we need the amount of parking we have.

I should say that there should absolutely be accessible parking and bus access to key arteries downtown, especially given that we’re a winter city but the current layout of parking access relative to the actual busy hubs downtown is bananas.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick wins here - the solution is one that requires incremental change - our City can’t reorganize itself around decades of mistakes but the first step to correcting a problem is acknowledging it.

Looking down 2nd Ave., I can’t imagine how anyone could say this is the image of downtown we all want.

What can we learn from Farmers’ Markets?

I just wanted to end this newsletter with a little bit of yammering about Farmers’ Markets because I think it’s relevant in the discussion of downtown problems.

You ever go downtown on a Saturday morning and cruise the markets?

Isn’t that a really nice feeling? Notice the increased foot traffic, the good vibes, and the overall wellness you feel down there?

You can also notice how much slower cars are driving because they’re being cautious about pedestrians, how certain streets are entirely closed to traffic, and how there’s probably an extra 200-300 people downtown compared to a Saturday morning without a market? We put out picnic benches and encourage folks to think of downtown as a destination and a place for social interaction, not just a drive-to-shop-then-leave.

Somehow everyone finds parking (even if, okay, it’s a little annoying) and the commerce of the nearby businesses is POSITIVELY affected from road closures, and the shutting down of a dozen or so street parking spots - not negatively affected like we seem to think will happen if we did so regularly.

And wait, before you think to yourself - Darrin, you’re just trying to have Christmas every morning - it doesn’t work that way, you silly goose.

My point isn’t that every morning should be Saturday morning with cute Farmers Markets, its simply that we should really pay attention to the fact that downtown FEELS better when it is prioritizing human traffic over car traffic AND the overall functioning of downtown does not diminish in a significant way when it chooses to do so. If we did create HUBS that resembled the feeling of Farmers Market and incentivized commerce at those hubs, we could replicate the vibrant feeling of these markets regularly in the downtown.

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Okay! That’s all I have for this week’s newsletter! I wanted to end with a super quick shout out to Andrew’s newsletter, Northern Capital News for hitting their 1-year anniversary. That newsletter has been both an inspiration and a big source of traffic for this newsletter so yay Andrew.

See ya next week!