No Light Rail in Vancouver!

Reprinted from The Antiplanner

Transit Malls = Business Killers

Oct 10

2008

In 1959, Kalamazoo, MI, was the first city to respond to suburban shopping malls by turning downtown streets into pedestrian malls. Since then, more than 100 cities have followed Kalamazoo’s example.

In the vast majority of cases, the malls proved to be a disaster for local businesses. Department stores and other shops were boarded up or replaced by low-rent thrift stores or antique malls. The planners who created the malls typically refused to admit failure, and it took decades for the cities to reopen the streets to autos.

The few success stories were in university towns like Boulder or resort towns that already have high rates of pedestrianship. In other words, malls don’t create pedestrians, but if the pedestrians are already there, you might make a mall work.

A special class of mall is the transit mall, which allows buses as well as pedestrians. Denver has one that is considered successful; Minneapolis has one that is not. Portland has one that is a real downer.

Installed in the 1970s, Portland’s mall shuttered many of the shops and businesses located on it. Major department stores that had entrances on more than one street locked their doors facing the mall so their real customers could enter on the other streets.

In the 1990s, Portland’s transit agency, Tri-Met, proposed to create a new mall for light-rail trains. Downtown business rose up in protest. Yes, we want light rail, said bookstore, restaurant, and other shop owners, but if you put it on our street, we will move.

So Tri-Met decided to lay the light-rail tracks on the bus mall. That infuriated transit supporters because the mixture of buses and light rail would actually have a lower capacity for moving transit riders than the bus mall alone — and planners expect to reach the new capacity limit in just a few years. But light rail is not about transit, it is about manipulating land use.

Now that rail construction on the mall is nearing completion — trains are due to run on it in about a year — a debate has begun on whether light rail will reinvigorate the businesses on the mall. Of course, there are the optimists, who think the large numbers of people riding trains will boost restaurants and other businesses. (But remember, the actual capacity will be lower than the bus mall.)

Then there is Rick Potestio, who calls the light-rail trains “a continuously moving steel wall” that will deaden the streets by limiting pedestrian crossings. “It’s going to be a disaster,” says another consultant.

The reporter for this Portland Tribune article interviewed a restaurant owner who hoped that the light-rail customers would make up for the parking that will be lost when light rail uses an extra lane of traffic. But he also worried that people would hop of the light rail, do drug deals, and then hop back on — creating an unsavory environment for restaurant goers.

The Antiplanner will be watching this issue and will report on it in the future.

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