The third and final day of Open Streets Brandon’s pilot project wrapped up over the weekend, and while organizers are still deciding what to do next, they’re thrilled with the community response to their idea.
Under the project, Lorne Avenue was closed to vehicle traffic between Rideau Park and Stanley Park for five hours on one Sunday in each of July, August, and September. The event on September 13 built on the success of the previous two.
“We weren’t sure what to expect in September with students being back in the classroom and summer winding down, but the turnout was fantastic,” said Emmy Sanderson, executive director of Brandon Downtown BIZ. “Each event seemed to grow, and there was a lot of positive feedback from participants. The amount of families out, kids riding their bikes, people participating in the activities, and just the freedom to explore a city and a neighbourhood in a different way was really positive.”
One of the biggest challenges they faced, according to Sanderson, was related to communication and road closures with some people not knowing certain routes would be closed despite the committee’s efforts to get the word out across social and traditional media. Despite that, however, people were thrilled with an event that built on the walkability of Brandon’s downtown.
“People tell stories of being in other cities,” Sanderson said, “‘Oh, I was in this city and they’ve closed their main downtown corridor to vehicle traffic permanently.’ You hear these stories of people experiencing something similar in other cities and how enjoyable it was. They wish we had a pedestrian corridor, a place where we could get out on the street like this on a regular basis. The feedback I was getting from people was that they wish Brandon could do this more.”
Whether this becomes a more permanent fixture in Brandon remains to be seen. The anecdotal evidence suggests people are very keen for more events like this, but Open Streets Brandon also spent a lot of time gathering data with help from researchers at Brandon University, and they’ll need to analyze that before they decide on what to do next.
“In order to move forward in any sort of bigger or permanent way, you can’t just rely on anecdotal evidence,” said Sanderson. “You have to look at the bigger picture and bigger community impact… We collected a lot of data.”
Whatever the data ends up pointing to, however, the three days of open streets in Brandon were a success as far as Sanderson is concerned.
“The committee had no idea what to expect,” she said. “When you’re sitting there, it’s like ‘Well, we’ve done it, we hope people show up’ and then you start to see the people coming out, it’s so satisfying. It warms the heart to see everyone having such a good time.”
