the problem we have is that politicians like to plan things at the 30,000 foot level. Car free day is great – for some… not so great for others. If you are a politician, cash in the local business till is not your priority – it is far more satisfying to see animation on the street.

Get down to street level, and ask the folks that live and work there 365 days a year and the measurement of success is far different.

Gastown should be applauded for their car free concept. It is well placed, a managable size, brings people into the area where there is no direct competition to the market – that way everybody wins.

They should NOT give up on this! It is too important to let this go.

Maybe it means closing from 1st to William only (enough to capture the park and the bulk of restaurants) and having the Trout Lake farmers market move to Commercial Drive instead.

Some of the fruit & veg merchants might not like that idea, but it gives them a chance to set up their own farmers market stalls on the street. Even Super Valu could get in on that.

The shops and restaurants outside of that stretch of Commercial could come up and set up their own stalls.

Perhaps it just needs more structure. I live on Commercial/Kitchener and I really want this to succeed – it just needs a chance.

I don’t live anywhere near Commercial Drive, but for the last decade, I’ve spent at least part of three to four days a week hanging out there, spending my money there and enjoying the eclectic street life and all that this most authentic of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods offers.

I have forged close friendships with merchants on the Drive, with many neighbourhood residents and with “street regulars”– from homeless panhandlers to more distant but frequent visitors like me.

There has been hardly a Sunday over the last half decade that I haven’t started my day with a cappuccino on the Drive and often ended it with dinner there.

The street life is what attracted me there in the first place– a constant flow of pedestrians– especially north of 1st Avenue. I actually counted one Sunday last year 1,200 people walk by north and south on the east sidewalk on Commercial Drive at Graveley. (Less than 800 on a car-fre Sunday from the centre line of the street east)

The first Car Free Day a few years ago– a renegade-like protest– was an interesting injection of the bizzarre and the urban elites. It infused the Drive on that one day with a wide range of entertainment and most businesses experienced a huge one-day boost in business.

But when the Vision Council announced the Summer Spaces program, I wondered what that might mean for a street that was already alive with people. I wondered if they were merely trying to legitimize a renegade anti-car movement by literally seizing control of the vehicle lanes on the street for the sake of exercizing control or whether they actually had a plan and were willing to commit the resources to making a car-free Commercial Drive even better than a car-friendly Commercial Drive already was.

Well, after the second Sunday of Summer Spaces, it was obvious that the application of this concept to a street as organic in its nature as Commercial Drive was a failure.

Street life had declined. Street activity was dispursed. Those of us who went there regularly and shopped there, ate there and drank coffee there found it more difficult to get there by car or bus. Those who went there expecting something “different” found something foreign– a street closed to traffic, straggling people looking for something to do and businesses struggling to stay open.

One of my friends who owns a long-established full service restaurant on the Drive suspended his long-standing Sunday brunch service with dwindling traffic and he opened an hour later for dinner. Another friend, who owns a newer restaurant did well — even better– for the first two weeks and then finally shut down on Sundays all together.

The local BIA worked extremely hard to rally business supporters– with next to no resources from the City (I understand all the money went to the Car Free people to erect barricades to stops cars).

Ideas were tossed around about theming each Sunday, hiring entertainment, alternating weekends and specific locations. Problems arose with conflicts over noise and parking with residential neighbours.

It all seems to fall on the ambivalent ears of those who were quite satisfied in measuring success by the mere lack of cars on a street.

What a sad effort. If it was all simply to ban cars from a street, ignoring the unique characteristics of that street, then the whole exercise was doomed to failure from the start, as some charged early on.

Three years ago, I visited Boston’s North End in the middle of a hot summer. A number of historic streets in this special ethnic-Italian neighbourhood close to cars each Sunday. Each weekend is hosted by a different community organization celebrating a different Saint the Italians honour. Each weekend starts with a lively parade. There is street music and dancing through the afternoon. There are vendors and food stalls from all over invited into the area.

Around 6:00 p.m., when the restaurants begin their evening trade, first taxis and buses return to the street. An hour later cars return. Sidewalk entertainment runs through until late in the evening.

Let’s take a great concept, put some real thought and planning into it, check the partisan agendas and axe-grinding issues at the door and try to make the special area– known as Commercial Drive– exceedingly better than it already is.

@Bob Ransford. Excellent comments! You have hit the problem dead on. It takes lots of Organizing to have these kind of events have a certain energy and focus in order to attract the public on an ongoing basis. Simply removing traffic is not going to cut it. Without some commitment from business owners and others the drive should limit themselves to 1-2 car free days in the summer.

PS The Romaneaque south, Villefranche et L’ Arbrelle don’t have street markets.

They have localy scaled shops and awning that have been thwere for 2000 years or more.

As for “it is all in the planning.” It sure as hell isn’t. Keep planners the #$%^ out of the way . . .

Kevin’s book store has gone out of business and major fast food outlets are swarming the place . . .

Okay you wanna keep “Thu Drive” the way it is . . . then stop your ridiculous counting and do more than talk . . . open a business . . . make your living there . . .

Another cryptic bit of blather from Jim Jones. What exactly are you on about now?

Nice work on Norquay, btw. It’s completely stalled thanks to your one-man jihad. Kingsway is such a lovely part of the city thanks to your selfless efforts.

CV, those lanes are sometimes used for moving traffic – as an example, parking in curb lanes is not permitted on Davie Street during rush hours. And as the side streets are rather congested as it is, there would be essentially no place for motoring customers to park – as a result, I expect businesses would suffer. (The City might also have some concerns about the loss of parking revenue).

Ahh good to see that Joseph Jones is still around and kicking. Life at cityhall would certainly be a little duller w/o the retelling of your latest “ideas”.
Commercial drive survived and thrived in it’s early days due to it’s retailers caring and hard constant work at imporving the area, we all owe a thanks to the immigrants from Italy and a smaller part from Portugal. The reason Kingsway isn’t commercial drive can be clearly seen, the retailers don’t care about the surrounding area. Why the city can’t turn it around on it’s own it can push changes. At this point any change is almost an improvement.

My 2cents, I think the action shouldn’t take place on Commercial at all but along the side streets, from 1st to Venables close every side street on both sides to the lane. This would allow buses to travel down the street as well as cars but would still alter the environment completely by not allowing any turns on or off of those streets. The space created would be rented out by the city with all money raised poured right back into the event.

Might not work out but then again neither is the current plan, so I figure it’s worth a shot.

Shop til you drop at your Carrall street market off the former rail line from the Interurban depot through the waterfront (that is the reason for Pigeon square shape, and the cause of many streetcar delays along Hastings only a few decades ago). The ATMs you need for more veggie cash are all on Pender destroying street facades as all banks do with their 10 metre wide fronts (see Kerrisdale) , when banks only need 3 metres and let other more real shops in, and have their back office stuff upstairs.
Keefer, Pender have 7 banks with ATMs.

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Few take the bus to the Drive, and there is next to none off-street parking. And you’ll note that there are no parallel streets with shopping retail nearby (nothing on Clark, nor on Victoria, Nanaimo (tuppence around Charles), and a smidgeon on Renfrew) so why would anyone get off on Clark, Nanaimo and walk to the Drive.

See UVic prof Patricia Roy’s thesis on the development of Vancouver along street car lines
Also an emphasis in her Illustrated History…

I”ve heard that muscians are annoyed as they are not allowed to ask for donations on the street when they perform.

At least the beer, and the reason many come, as Greek Days, was sold to sitting down customers. The old Italian Days that closed the Drive lead to a lot of trouble, same with Greek Days, with urinations and fulminations.

I lived on the Drive for decades and it was breakins every two years, just after schools let out. It is not a great place.
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But lively street scene! Check it out when it rains or is dark after 5 pm. Friends from out of town wondered where the street scene was, as the shops closed at 6 and there was hardly anything open after 9 pm. Were Vancouverites all tucked into bed at that time, they wondered. It’s not a Latin street if you listen to the voices and is cold in sensibilities,but was a cheaper place to live for a while.
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It is getting harder to live there, as the plumbing shop becomes a pub, a deli becomes a $1 slice pizza place, a bakery is torn up to make a larger club. Clothes shop becomes a sushi shop, etc.
All these are small shops with a landlord who replaces the merchants every few months when they fall behind on rent.
So the gas and water pipes are now in, the place will never revert to a retail shop, but a succession of immigrant businessmen trying to make a go of a small snack restaurant, same name on the awning, and different business persons running the front.

# As to the street counts, that can be people walking up from the free (didn’t pay a fare) Skytrain, and not waiting for the bus on a Sunday slack schedule or not having a transfer.

# The Fringe festival on the Drive showed that many of the visitors brought their SUV (and that was very noticeable) parked on the side streets, met their friends and went to venues all evening. We residents in this old part of town had to park blocks away because our usual spots on the street were taken over by Pt Grey matrons. (same for the VECC, and soon the revamped York).

Head on off to Collingwood, South Fraser if you want an interesting street scene.
Maybe Township of Hastings Suburban Lands should secede and reverse their corrupt 1912 vote to join Vancouver and we can let the 1908 separation of the Creme de la Creme from South Van never happen.

Well said by Freeman O’Shea. I fully agree with the statements: “Could Summer Spaces work? Yes, with a little planning and radical ideas like consulting local business and residents. Could vibrant community events exist without cars and still maintain a healthy commercial district? Of course it could and, indeed, this city is in desperate need of them. “

No one mentioned going to the “Powell Street Festival” that was near the Drive this year in Woodland Park.

Woodland Park is not visible from the Drive, being a long block west, and north of Venables, which may be part of the reason. But it got lots of publicity and had 4 times the space, which they used well. Two stages, and space for the retail was not hampered. Shade trees, wading pool. Kids loved it.

Foods as always great, and the usual lineups for favourites. Lack of major water hookups was a small problem.

3 days , with the Sunday Aug 2 overlapping the Car-free Drive but I suspect the lack of beer at this Nisei Japanese festival meant there might be less interest.

One volunteer said that perhaps we could just rename one of the Woodland side streets Powell and thus retain the festival’s original name.

Meanwhile the City has put a shockingly high covered fence around the old “heroin square” that is the Powell Street Grounds/Oppenheimer Park.
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And do we note that the Fiji-Asian Fest is leaving Vancouver for Burnaby. It was at the Graham Bruce school grounds in Augusts past.