Here’s your chance to weigh in with decision-makers about Bute Plaza (Bute St south of Robson), following its trial transformation into a people place. The stakes? Either a permanent plaza, or back to motor vehicle traffic.
The survey takes around 5 minutes, and closes September 18. You can review the plaza in a delightful video (Kathleen Corey and Brian Gould) linked via this July post on PT.
My opinion is a great big YES to a permanent plaza, with a clear call for many more to come. And on a larger scale.
Bute-Robson Trial Plaza (Click to enlarge)
Also note that bicycles are involved, in the form of a Mobi station. Why, it’s the perfect storm. It probably helps to have the support of the local Robson St. BIA. Not to forget that people places of this sort are actually good for businesses.
That block already led to a plaza south of Haro St.
– so there wasn’t much traffic on it to begin with, making it a good candidate for closure.
I would expect that the main people impacted would be those using the alley to service the stores fronting Robson St. With the large number of vacancy signs on Robson, you probably won’t get a lot of feedback on that front.
The alley is still accessible.
No doubt this is just another small step to completely eliminate vehicle access to the West End.
Already, Haro is blocked to thru (WB) traffic at Thurlow. Bute is closed to a plaza South of Haro. Jervis is blocked at Robson to SB traffic. Now the proposal is to also close Bute at Robson, presently a two-way access point.
Let’s review who’s really impacted. Right on the corner of Haro and Bute is the Haro Park Centre, and Independent, Assisted and Complex Care home, providing excellent care and support to allow seniors to age in place. This is an elderly and frail population who depend on taxis, Handidart, transport Ambulance, sadly and most importantly, rapid and frequent access to Emergency service vehicles. Not to mention, friends and family who use the passenger loading zones to pick up and drop off residents with limited mobility.
How are these residents and visitors affected if that section is closed? How many kilometers must every vehicle now travel to and from around surrounding streets because of small closure? What happens when Emergency vehicles block Haro attending?
Can they attend City Hall to complain? Use the web to fill in the impact survey? Will their voices and concerns be heard? From City Hall, I’m sure this looks like a low impact, done deal but the feet on the ground should say this is a bad idea which could endanger people’s health and life as well a potentially increase the traffic from many surrounding blocks, counter to the goals of less traffic.
They really need to fill out the survey.
Have you filled out the survey? I did, but will the residents of Haro Park?
Assuming they know there’s actually a survey, there is a single common access computer in the Centre library. I have never seen anyone on it, presumably because this is an elderly population, some of whom have been living there longer than there have been personal computers (or bike lanes or parklets, etc.).
These are the survey questions:
– About how often do you visit Bute-Robson Trial Plaza?
– What do you like to do in the plaza?
– Are there other things you would like to see or do in the plaza that isn’t possible currently?
– How do you usually get to the plaza?
– What do you like best about the plaza?
– What could be done to improve the plaza?
– In your opinion, has the plaza improved the neighbourhood?
– Overall, how satisfied are you with the plaza?
– Do you like the idea of the trial plaza becoming a year-round permanent public space?
– Feel free to share additional ideas or comments here.
Other than the final question, nothing asks whether this is an appropriate location, if there are any negative impacts to the neighborhood, traffic or anything other than the make-up of the plaza itself.
Once again, CoV have geared a survey to find the answers they are looking to support their position and advance their causes.
wrt: @JoeActivated’s remarks, I guess “success” all depends on what you are measuring. I’m sure Breka will consider the free extended patio seating courtesy of CoV a success.
The plaza is fait accompli.
It’s almost as if cars using 99% of road space in the Downtown core very very very inefficiently isn’t sustainable. Crazy ehh.
This pocket of public space on Robson used to house 8-10 privately owned parked vehicles for well under market rates.
Now it’s home to hundreds of people and interactions; a thriving public realm.
The real test of success will be if the retail on the west side of Bute, which has struggled for years to attract quality permanent tenants, gets better or worse.
Remember, it’s the edges of a urban square/plaza that really create and define that space. And the more activated they are,18/7 year/round, the more successful the space is.
Perhaps seating also needs to be added on the west edge to help activate and compliment the retail there, with the bike rental racks placed elsewhere.
Bike rental racks are cool, but they don’t activate an edge of an urban square/plaza. Probably the opposite.