Pedestrian Mall in Downtown Calgary
The City of Toronto has encouraged people to walk and bike for more trips through successful programs like Open Streets TO, ActiveTO major road closures, Yonge Tomorrow pedestrian priority areas, and weekend car-free pilots in High Park. Studies from ActiveTO demonstrated that these programs did better at encouraging women, people from equity deserving communities, as well as people of all ages and abilities to participate. However, in the last term of council these programs became increasingly intermittent and the most popular program (ActiveTO on Lake Shore West) was cancelled. These need to be scheduled on a regular basis, as has been done in other cities such as Ottawa’s Gatineau Parkway which is reserved for active use every Saturday and Sunday morning.
