4 ms·

Here's what the problem was. The King St Project dramatically improved transit. Tens of thousands of people were getting home earlier. This was good for riders

by wmil 7y ago

Here's what the problem was. The King St Project dramatically improved transit. Tens of thousands of people were getting home earlier. This was good for riders. However there were a few nice but not noteworthy restaurants that got a lot of evening customers who were people waiting for King St to get moving and decided to give up and have dinner or a few drinks. Think of it along the lines of airport restaurants suffering due to reduced flight delays and reliably fast security clearance.

52-6F-62 7y ago
That runs counter to the data I’d previously seen. Business owners claimed spending went down when it was reported as going up. https://globalnews.ca/news/4390635/king-street-pilot-project-ridership-reliability-data-may-june-2018/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4390635/king-street-pilot-project... Or see the city’s YoY report, page 16: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/8fb5-TS_King-Street-Annual-Dashboard_Final.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/8fb5-TS_Ki... The restaurants that suffered were belonged to the fellow I mentioned and those that aligned themselves with him. He was already a bit of a notorious blowhard. What you’re describing is what they claimed would happen, but didn’t because more people were encouraged to spend time there. Even anecdotally I certainly spend more time there after films than I otherwise did because it’s so much better to move through rather than a total blockade of cars every single day rendering it basically a non-consideration—at least on our part.