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> In San Clemente, a successful effort to remove some parklets originated with downtown merchants who wanted parking for their customers. The youtube channel,
by greggman3 5y ago
> In San Clemente, a successful effort to remove some parklets originated with downtown merchants who wanted parking for their customers.
The youtube channel, Not Just Bikes, showed that in the 1970s, much of the Netherlands was car centric and claimed there were death threats by store owners who thought that getting rid of the parking spaces would deprive them of their customers. According to the channel the opposite was true. Removing the cars increased the number of people on the streets significantly and business for those stores increased.
I have no idea if that would work for San Clemente. It's not some $800k person city like Amsterdam. It's a 64k person city slightly isolated beach community with a 5-6 block long shopping street lined with parking.
https://goo.gl/maps/H6wyLdguSjcGKMACA https://goo.gl/maps/H6wyLdguSjcGKMACA
Assuming it could get the foot traffic it would be 10x nicer with no cars and more outdoor seating but they'd still need some place to put the visitors (off the main street parking structures/lots)
- jsemrau 5y agoPlaces like these always make me wonder about why would I drive there to sit outside and look at someone else's car.
- jimmux 5y agoI have seen this in my city recently. There's a fairly popular tourist street where they removed all car access, converting it to a pedestrian strip with a tram line. The businesses fought it aggressively because they thought customers would disappear along with the few parking spaces. As expected by most sensible people, the opposite happened. More space for customers means they can access shops without cramming through busy footpaths, and enjoy the street itself more, spending more time there. Now it has more capacity and the businesses that opposed it seem to be doing very well.