Mayor Jonathan Cote hopes the city can close Front Street to vehicle traffic on weekends this summer.
On Monday, council approved a motion to have staff explore a partial weekend closure of Front Street during the summer months to enable the riverfront connection between Sapperton Landing Park and Downtown New Westminster. Staff will report back to council on the issue.
Cote said the issue was raised at the city’s transportation task force meeting, but it’s also something council has talked about in the past.
“Interestingly, during the COVID-19 we are seeing more people wanting to get to our public spaces, including our riverfront,” he said. “I put this forward as a potential opportunity to give it more space and allow people to connect. It might be a good time to do a pilot project to see what might work.”
Cote said there are international examples of cities where roads that are very much needed for goods movement on weekdays have been opened up as public spaces on weekends.
“I think this might be an interesting opportunity to see if it’s feasible,” he said. “I know the railroad issue might be a potential issue that our staff will have to look into and report back on. It’s something I’d be interested in exploring.”
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said he supports having the city explore the idea, but wants to ensure it engages with Columbia Street businesses and the Downtown New Westminster BIA. He said truck traffic is no longer a Monday-to-Friday event, so he’d like to see statistics about the goods movement along Front Street on weekends.
“In principle, I think the idea is good if we can do it, but not at the sacrifice of loading heavy trucks onto Columbia where we have businesses that may be affected,” he said.
Cote said staff should be able to bring that type of information back to council for its consideration.
“I think we have some really good data in terms of the usage for what happens on the weekend,” he said. “We also have data from when it was closed down and where the traffic diverted to. I think that is definitely part of the decision-making process.”
When Metro Vancouver did a major sewer upgrade project in 2018, Front Street was closed to all vehicle traffic between Columbia and Begbie streets for several months. Regular vehicle traffic was able to use most of Front Street, with a short detour on Begbie Street, but large trucks weren’t permitted on Front Street at all and were rerouted to Royal Avenue.
During a previous closure of Front Street in 2016, the City of New Westminster took advantage of the road closure to host Pier 2 Landing, an event that featured a variety of events at Westminster Pier Park, Sapperton Landing Park and along Front Street.
The city’s riverfront vision includes plans to create a pedestrian and cyclist link between Westminster Pier Park and Sapperton Landing Park, part of which includes a pathway over the river. The conceptual design for the riverfront connection between the two parks, endorsed in October 2017, has not yet come to fruition.
“There is ongoing technical work. That is a really complicated piece of greenway to develop,” Lisa Leblanc, the city’s manager of transportation, told the Record in March. “There is rail implications. There is the working river kind of implications. There are environmental implications. There are First Nations implications. We are just working through all of those implications and the risks associated with them and getting some questions answered. The work continues but it’s quite technical at this point, and we are just sorting through all the various stakeholder concerns.”
