What does DTK need?

[ijmorlan]

How so? Ottawa does not have one. Calgary does, and AFAIK Calgary's is....fine?

FWIW...it should have been a transit mall, but it doesn't matter now, it being a pedestrian plaza is even better for King St. but worse for the city.

Ottawa got rid of theirs (Rideau St).  It was a mess.

It was a bus transit mall. Very different from having a mostly pedestrian space with a few LRTs gliding through every few minutes. It felt like a busy 4-lane road even though it was all buses.

Also the sidewalk was mostly enclosed, which I cannot believe is by itself responsible for the problems (although I’m not even completely clear on what the problems were, even having lived there), but it is a characteristic that needs to be noted and certainly was an important feature of the way the street was.

King St. already has very little parking and not much motor-vehicle-moving capacity. Shifting those few parking spaces into the always-available parking garages and the motor vehicles onto parallel streets (one block in each direction — Charles and Duke) would remove very few people from the street, but allow many more on it as pedestrians and cyclists.