Pedestrian only streets

[voyager12]

It would be a hard sell in such a car friendly town but these areas are very popular in cities that have them. Once merchants are convinced that having the ability to walk freely from store to store will be a draw for customers. It would have to be a throughfare already located in a dense neighborhood with parking in the surrounding area or the site would end up being pseudo walkable like Birkdale. I think portions of Camden would work after more retail opens there or sections of North Davidson after more infrastructure is put in place.

[atlrvr]

It is the long range goal to make Camden a pedestrian only street.

There was talk of making Trade St. a pedestrian and transit only street, but the difficulties of the hotels with their drives killed the idea.

[voyager12]

Wow I am so prescient Atlvr. Well, Camden would be a natural fit but I won't be expecting it anytime soon.

[Charlotte_native]

Wow I am so prescient Atlvr. Well, Camden would be a natural fit but I won't be expecting it anytime soon.

The neighborhood and current businesses on Camden would certainly not mind.

[appatone]

IF memory serves, and of course it doesn't always, Grubb considered trying to make Elizabeth Ave. pedestrian only in the section that they have there. They however decided against it saying that making roads pedestrian only can actually kill off the retail on the street. I wish we had some examples of where this concept has worked and where it has failed so that we could really try to figure where something like this could help or hurt the street. One obvious failure was Fayettville Mall in DT Raleigh.

[voyager12]

The biggest success I know of is State Street in Madison WI. Also succcessful in Ithaca, New York; Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont. Note that most are very LIBERAL university towns where such ideas find more favor. I would think it would be popular in Asheville and I have heard rumors batted around up there about Haywood but it never came to fruition. These cities also have a built in base population from the schools that would use the area and the infrastructure to support it. I pasted some interesting facts about Madison's State Street from PEDSAFE below: The State Street right-of-way is 20 m (66 ft) wide from building face to building face. In the 100

[rockhilljames]

Whoa! I read the title and the first street that came to mind was Camden.

Hell, when Price's Chicken Coop is selling lunch, it is a pedestrian only street!

[redjeep77]

^ no kidding. Price's has a line filed out the door by 11:30 each morning! (by the way rockhilljames, i love the latin quote.......it's the language of king's and scholars!)

[dubone]

I'm not a big fan of pedestrian-only streets. If you don't want to walk near cars, go to a mall.

[Charlotteman]

St. Augustine, Florida has their main drag closed to cars (except emergency vehicles etc) It is perhaps the biggest tourist draw in the city. Cool, eccentric shops and restaurants.....

Too bad Charlotte can't create a unique pedestrian only street that would turn into a tourist draw!

[Rickydavisfan21]

I am not a very big fan of this either. I don't know how many of ya'll have frequented Savannah, GA, but they have been talking about making Broughton St. (Savannah's version of tryon street kinda) into a pedi only road, with pedi bridges over jefferson, barnard, whitaker, bull, drayton and abercorn, unfortunately Savannah already has massive parking problems, and taking out a whole 1/3-1/2 mile of parking would just not been good for the city, savannah, unlike charlotte, is cursed with not enough surface lots.

[AuLukey]

St. Augustine, Florida has their main drag closed to cars (except emergency vehicles etc) It is perhaps the biggest tourist draw in the city. Cool, eccentric shops and restaurants.....

Too bad Charlotte can't create a unique pedestrian only street that would turn into a tourist draw!

It's funny you should mention St Augustine as it was the first thing to pop into my head when I read the title of this thread. I agree, that strip is one of the main draws if not THE main draw in the city and is always busy, rain or shine. I wish we could get a market style street like those somewhere inside the loop in Charlotte.

[RugbyPike#11]

Beale Street in Memphis is blocked off at night but remains open to traffic during the day. My memories of the experience are fuzzy, but from what I remember it was a blast. Are there any streets with great night life that would benefit from only being blocked off at night? That could also help alleviate the problem of certain people that come to uptown to drive around and clog traffic.

[Vitamin_N]

Could they close off the intersection of Trade & Tryon and make it into town square type of area? For car traffic, there's already Church, College, 4th, and 5th.

[monsoon]

While it does sound nice, its my guess that every business on Camden would be opposed to the idea simply because in Charlotte, if you can't drive there, then you cut off a huge base of potential customers. I don't think anyone in that area wants to rely on customers that would be generated by the LRT.

Specifically in regards to Prices, its my guess that 95% of their customers do not live within walking distance of the place, and nobody is going to drive to a train stop, pay for a ticket, ride to prices, then return just to get a box of fried chicken. It is good chicken, but it isn't that good.

[Mobuchu]

I just dont see the need. Look at places like Greenwich Village in NYC, or the French Quarter in NO. Those streets get packed but the streets are still open to cars.

You would need alot more retail and entertainment on Camden to be able to support it and maybe a parking deck on one end. But shutting it down to cars would kill connectivity and force cars onto already busy South Blvd and S. Tryon. Have nice wide sidewalks and some parallel parking and we're golden.

What I could see is having street festivals/party's on Camden like they do on Bourban St. Leave it open during the day and shut it down in the evening.

[Charlotte_native]

While it does sound nice, its my guess that every business on Camden would be opposed to the idea simply because in Charlotte, if you can't drive there, then you cut off a huge base of potential customers. I don't think anyone in that area wants to rely on customers that would be generated by the LRT.

Specifically in regards to Prices, its my guess that 95% of their customers do not live within walking distance of the place, and nobody is going to drive to a train stop, pay for a ticket, ride to prices, then return just to get a box of fried chicken. It is good chicken, but it isn't that good.

I wasn't really thinking Camden all the way down, just the part between Tryon and Park Ave that is really only a cut-through to West Blvd or the Design Center then it dead-ends. I also don't think anyone implied that LTR would be the access for this. There is parking all around the area on the side streets and on surface lots so the "walkers" for the drag would still likely drive there, just not on that one block section. The Art & Soul Festival closed all of Camden except for West Blvd and traffic was not a problem at all.

[orulz]

Rather than making Camden a pedestrian-only street, perhaps Charlotte could turn it into a "woonerf." Either look it up if you don't know what that is, or else take a look at Wall Street in Asheville or South Water Street in Wilmington.

The idea is to design the road such that there is little barrier between vehicle space and pedestrian space: no curb; bollards at most. Then make the vehicular portion of the street narrow, put in parallel parking, and pave it with a rough and durable surface (cobblestone) so that cars have to drive slowly - 10mph or so. This invites pedestrians and vehicles to share the space.

[AuLukey]

As nice as those are sometimes, having minimal vehicle space is only asking for trouble. This would hopefully be a very low speed, one way street if they were to design it like that. If I was driving, I'd probably avoid a cobblestone road if I could.

[otherstream]

As has been the experience of most U.S. pedestrian streets, there have been attempts to re-open State Street to general car traffic, get rid of the buses, and add on-street parking.

There's a reason for these attempts to re-open so many pedestrian streets. For every succesful one, like State Street in Madison (who really does work), there are a dozens more that merely became empty, barren shells once the cars were removed. In fact, closing them off to vehicular traffic ultimately made most of these "downtown pedestrian malls" even less attractive to foot traffic, because they were so deserted and just plain creepy, especially at night.

Pedestrian-only streets that have survived tend to be those which already had a lot of daytime and nighttime foot traffic to begin with. If an area is dying, turning it into a pedestrian will probably only hasten its demise. And if an area is already thriving, why risk that success by radically changing its traffic pattern?