Spring Garden Road Enhancements

[Hali87]

It looks like they're toying with the idea of turning Spring Garden into a transit mall. This has some potential but there's a strong correlation between transit malls and mediocre retail environments - they need to be thought out really well. Granville Street in Vancouver is an example of a good one, and is pretty similar to Spring Garden in terms of uses and built form. 7th Ave in Calgary is a confusing mess (for visitors, it probably works great once you're used to it) but it's more of a Hollis type street - which seems to be the case for most transit malls in North America. Most of the "successful" American examples have been really good at accommodating transit, OR pedestrians/higher-end retail, but not both.

There's also a strong correlation between the ones that are good at both and the use of electric vehicles. That's something that exists in Vancouver and that could work on Spring Garden, but it would take some upgrades to the transit fleet ($$$) for it to really work well. Gottingen and Barrington seem like they would benefit from an upgrade to electric vehicles as well (really everywhere would, but those three streets in particular)