08-30-2023, 05:15 PM
(08-30-2023, 02:56 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: 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.
I'm curious how the rise of food delivery services could impact the future of King St. There a very few non-restaurant businesses on King St (which is an issue itself; would you go to Fairview mall if it was 90% restaurants?), and the restaurants seem to have become highly dependent on food delivery services. I don't really know what closing King St to the couriers would do to them. Would they start declining orders from King St? Would fees for these restaurants go up? I don't think any added pedestrians from removing cars would come anywhere close to making up lost business if food delivery is significantly impacted, especially because I don't think cars are particularly big reason that people avoid downtown.
And don't get me wrong, I hate this current situation, especially with the amount of "perpendicular parking" (parking straight across the sidewalk) and double parking that I see. And I don't think it's healthy long term for the businesses or the area.

