The Crosswalk Awakens - The Herald Street Story Continues
Almost five years ago, I wrote an article about Herald Street. In that post, I spoke about how the two block stretch of it, from Douglas to Store Street, has for the years I have lived in Victoria, been always on the brink of being a great downtown urban street, yet always just always falling short. Despite many attempts by entrepreneurs over the years, nothing has been successful in bringing the street to life. Despite the fact that it should be, it has never become a destination street on its own.
In my opinion, what has been holding Herald Street back more than anything else, was a lack of accessibility along its east / west access. In particular, the lack of a crosswalk at Government Street. I have been asking the city for many years to prioritise this crosswalk and had been assured for years that it was at the top of the list, but that it had to wait for other infrastructure to be paired with it. Well, the wait has paid off, because the city has recently completed a true pedestrian crossing at Herald and Government, as a part of the Government Street Bikeway project.
It will be interesting to see the impact that the crosswalk has on this part of the city. As I wrote just last year, having people be able to move in multiple directions through spaces has a positive impact on the vitality of the space and gives those simply moving through more options on how they would like to move through the space.
I am sure it will not happen immediately as this new option will need to mapped into the minds of those wanting to go down to this area of town, but it will happen I am sure. The area has been adding residential space with ground floor commercial for over twenty years, and there is more coming. Recently a huge swath of buildings were torn down in the 600 block along Herald and Chatham to make way for a massive rental building called the Spencer Block. This project will have almost 300 units and has ground floor commercial along three streets, most importantly for us, this includes Herald Street.The project is also interesting as it most closely aligns with old town in its design at 5 storeys and zero lot line setbacks. While some may say that the fact that there have been so many projects over the years and none of them have had the necessary impact, that this one will not change anything and we will likely see the commercial space sit empty for months or years. But I don’t think so, this will be the first project since the completion of the crosswalk and it will stretch much closer to Douglas Street. This will draw people down from the Victoria Public Market towards Store street and be able see some of the great retail that already exists here (Opus, Union Pacific, Herald St. Brewing). Hopefully as that happens, some of the quieter parts of the street such as the 600 block will start to pick up as well.
So you might wonder why the addition of a crosswalk could have such a positive impact. Well if you had tried to cross Government Street here in the past you would know that you would have to be paying attention to the traffic flow and find a good moment to run across. Obviously a large portion of the population isn’t able to do this, and a further portion simply would rather not, so if they wanted to explore further they would have to walk a block to the north or south to venture further east or west on Herald and a lot of people aren’t willing to do that. Now anyone can simply pause at the crosswalk and wait for the cars to pause before they cross. There is even a pedestrian island in the centre which fits because the actual traffic lanes have been reduced to just two lanes.
I be interested in what you think, will you be more likely to walk along Herald Street with this new crosswalk in place? What else is missing from the street to make it a true urban destination in the city? Let me know in the comments.