Businesses protested for months about potential lost business, however as a resident I feel so much safer walking down the street. It feels like foot traffic has increased there, too. It's such an improvement.
I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us take more cars of the road and create more green spaces for people in the future.
For whatever it's worth, Chicago tried both of these things, and they didn't work out.
The main shopping drag, State Street, was pedestrianized in 1979. You can see it for a few seconds in the film National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It didn't work. It was re-opened to traffic in 1996, and is now far more vibrant than it used to be (though, with a number of other contributing factors since nothing exists in a vacuum in a large city).[1]
Maybe people weren't ready for that in the 1980's, though the region has a number of outdoor shopping malls, in spite of its cold weather.
I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us take more cars of the road and create more green spaces for people in the future.
Again, Chicago did this. 40 city blocks are linked underground (and a few via bridges). I like the Pedway, but it's mostly vacant space, sleeping homeless people, and bad smells.[2] Except for rush hours, it's pretty much derelict.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_(Chicago)#State_S...
As for the Pedway, one of problems is like most underground walkways, navigation is difficult. There's no official map that tells you what destinations you can reach and how to reach them. You can't navigate with Google Maps, and signage is poor to non-existent. Also, most areas of the Pedway are quiet, secluded and feel unsafe. My sense is that the Pedway was designed for hyperlocalized usage (moving from one building to the next) and not as a network of passages.
There are some special cases - tourist / student towns, but I think the gist is that people need to be able to get there.
Carrot AND stick.
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/11/why-was-the-state-str...
Out of curiosity, how did that pan out? Closing off an area to road traffic is basically a re-prioritization towards nearby residents, and away from distant visitors and the commerce that they engage in, so it would be interesting to know how badly the latter groups suffer.
Distant visitors still arrive by tram loads. And parking, whilst terrible, is available close by.
When you think about switching the area back to allow cars again, you begin to realise how little you needed that street to begin with. It was mostly for people showing off their cars and loud music.
While it's seems like a shoddy observation, it's surprising how much car usage isn't really about transport but about status or psychological relief. "Going for a drive" is equivalent to "going for a walk" in much of the US.
i'd also advocate making licensing for vehicles much harder and increasing the enforcement and punishment of distracted driving.
For example you can have a car free shopping street where cars can only park at the back sides of the shops.
Edit: found it https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/17/drive...
while not perfect, I am actually a fan of this approach. in my ideal world, the government only administers sanctions to a citizen when they cause material harm to another person. let the insurance companies be on the hook (and possibly require the purchase of such insurance) for the actual penalties and have them calculate the risk. then excessively risky behaviors become de facto illegal because the insurance payments are not economic.
St Kilda is a such an awesome area, but like lots of places far too many cars. Melbourne has a serious problem with cars, most of the large parks even include roads running through them. Even with a fantastic inner city tram system, too many people are addicted to cars.
They could easily expand the pedestrian section further up the street - and I'd like to see it too, but smaller measured steps will probably be more sustainable until parking gets "solved".