Business group floats idea to make Calgary's 17th Avenue S.W. car-free at certain times

Should Calgary's 17th Avenue S.W. be closed to vehicle traffic and open only to pedestrians at various times?

That's a question being pondered by the 17th Avenue Business Improvement Area (BIA), one of the city's 15 BIAs, which are groups of businesses that work together on various potential improvements to neighbourhoods.

The question is being posed in an online survey that asks respondents whether they'd support seeing the popular avenue closed to traffic all summer, for summer weekends, summer weekdays, or not at all.

Tulene Steiestol, executive director of the 17th Avenue BIA, said this represents the first step in a process that could take years.

But Steiestol said the organization is eyeing similar projects that have been successful in neighbourhoods like Inglewood and Fourth Street S.W., which hosts the annual Lilac Festival.

"There's been those requests to us to say, 'Hey, would you guys ever consider, as a business improvement area, shutting down the road?'" Steiestol said.

"There's lots of examples, especially out of Eastern Canada, where this has really worked."

Inglewood has been running Car Free Sunday for the past two years, closing Ninth Avenue S.E. between 11th Street and 14th Street to traffic each Sunday in August for a chunk of the day.

Dan Allard with the Inglewood BIA said feedback has always been positive to that initiative, but he noted the initiative is being cut down to a single day in September this year.

"It was just that we didn't have the money to spread it out across your four or five Sundays," Allard said.

Coun. Courtney Walcott said a temporary street closure program is something the city could consider helping with as Calgary tries to move away from a reliance on cars.

"We have to start considering how we can create more spaces for people," said the Ward 8 representative.

The 17th Avenue BIA survey is still running online. In an email, Steiestol said responses to the survey are still coming in, so the organization may keep it open until the end of the month — though no hard deadline is in place.