The Insanity of Allowing Cars in Our Most Walkable Places
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- Опубликовано: 2 янв 2024
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Seattle's Pike Place Market has been a working public market for over a century, and continues to become more and more popular with locals and out-of-town visitors alike. But how is it that a place with such massive pedestrian demands still allows unfettered vehicular access?
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- North America's 10 Best Public Markets: • Top 10 Public Markets/...
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Resources:
- "Market Wars" by Joyce Skaggs Brewster for the Seattle Weekly (1981), available at:
- www.historylink.org/file/22664
- www.historylink.org/file/1602
- www.friendsofthemarket.net/wp...
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Images
- Pike Plaza Urban Renewal flyer, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 261_001
- Proposed Market Development, Pike Plaza Redevelopment Project Architectural model, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 33342
- Pike Place Market, 1968, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 191816
- Lower Pike Street leading to lower Post Alley, 1972, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 32530
- Liberty Malt Store, 1968, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 19186
- Initiative One, 1971, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 1802_B8_003_024
- KOMO TV "Who Will Save the Market", 1971, Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, Item 2101
- AWV deconstruction By SounderBruce - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Disney Star Wars By Univaded Fox - www.flickr.com/photos/1314368..., CC0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Main Street USA By Alfred A. Si - Own work, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Space Mountain By Kaleeb18, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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You forgot to name and shame the politicians who were most likely paid by the developers.
Why its think of 4 reasons why its not a fully ped space that are not just america is car nation
1. Its a tourist trap and tourists likely dont know what transit services are offered and thus use cars
2. The cost of living in seattle is sky high so a lot people must commute into the city and despite seattle being one of the better transit cities in usa and likely the best midish sized city.
3. its still a midish sized city in usa so a lot of the population will be underserved and this will disproportionately impact the people that need to commute often considerable distances for cost of living the best USA transit cities with a few exceptions would be considered poor and subpar to mid at best in the average european or east asian nation
4. Depending on how the laws/codes the area are to fully pedestrianize an area it could be a very long expensive and byzantine process and this is in the end of the day a place that operates with the goal of making money. Yes i know pedestrianized place make more money on average in at least in europe but basically everybody in europe has reasonable alternatives to driving which just does exist in usa even in most good transit areas thus the possiability that less cars = less people and money is more likely here and business owners everywhere are risk adverse
You could use a better mic to bring your voice RIGHT UP to the listener (like in podcasts).
I disliked the ad. It is not true that a public (fake) WiFi could see all your traffic.
Since most websites use HTTPS, almost everything is encrypted. A VPN is just wasting CPU cycles there, encrypting already encrypted connections.
Getting around geo-blocking is a valid use case.
@@jt_hopp i use it to get around a reddit IP ban lol
I'm so happy that Seattle saved such a great place. Atlanta's downtown basically got destroyed, and we only have one small market remaining. Our downtown doesn't feel welcoming or bustling like one should, and it has very little character. Good thing Seattle didn't fall victim to similar forces.
I love how Marta is redoing 5 point station like its gonna help anything. You get out of the new station and all you really do is visit is parking lots.
@@tone_bone the redesign isn't really addressing that. its mostly aesthetics. theyre doing it for the World Cup in 2026
yeah but you have the Beltline a walkable path that is basically a boardwalk with bars, where rent has skyrocketed, and people drive from all over the metro area to get to (to mostly just drink). Atlanta really dropped the ball with the Beltline.
@@ab8817, the Beltline feels more like a park trail with some spots that have bars. Nicely done though.
@@ab8817 Agreed. When I first heard of the Beltline concept, I envisioned a trolley circumnavigating the city on legacy raillines. What a child I was.
Hey there - I love your channel and just realized that you’re based in Seattle. As a fellow Seattleite, Pike Place lover, and urbanist, I’d love to sit down and chat with you some time if you’re up for it. Or collaborate on a video if you want to collab on some kind of urbanist/biking/food video or other project some time!
He's not actually based out of Seattle, alas. He was just visiting and is from here originally. :) But you should totally do a collab at some point!
J Kenzi López Alt is an urbanist too?? Nice.
@citynerd you gotta get on this asap!
Yesssss!!!! I hope this happens. Also taking this opportunity to thank you for increasing my understanding of cooking tremendously.
Lets goo maybe a food walking tour that looks over the history of Pike Place Market and it''s shops (or another area) that would be amazing
The crossover I didn't know I needed. Would absolutely love to see this happen!
My girlfriend and I were in Seattle just a few days ago for Christmas and took a day to go to pike place. I couldn’t believe that they were allowing cars through the street with so many pedestrians. There was even a giant RV that decided to drive down the street. Everyone was shaking their heads and the guy driving the RV had a look on his face like “ah I f***** up didn’t I?”
That's a perfect situation to illustrate the point. A lose lose situation where the driver also doesn't want to be there.
If only we had some way of communicating to drivers where it makes sense for them to drive.....
as a (smaller) RV driver.. I've been in that situation - accidentally - and it SUCKS. Not only embarrassing but it really triggers my flight response wanting to just get the hell out of there, which just makes it worse with all the pedestrians.
It’s so easy to turn into it on accident too if you don’t know what’s up.
lol anytime I'm there, I can tell that most drivers aren't sure of the best way to find parking so they end up on that street and are just as frustrated as everyone else. I don't think anyone who knows about that street willingly drives down it to find street parking.
tourists normally drive down the street and some out-of-town WA residents. It's annoying.
I’ve lived in Seattle since 2010 and it has never made sense to me that can drive through and park right in the middle of Pike Place. I still love the place, it truly is a unique place that locals visit as much as tourists, but they just need to make it car free already. You can park in a million places nearby and, like you said, taking any public transport there couldn’t be any easier.
Agreed, it didn't make sense in the nineties and it certainly doesn't make sense now.
I am a car lover, as much as that may be an unpopular stance on this channel, I love driving, I love the convenience, I love my vehicle, and yet even I completely agree we need more car free spaces, cars and pedestrians do not mix well, neither do cars and cyclists, vehicles have been given way too much privilege at everyone else's expense. Cars should be on the highway, not in bustling city streets. The number one way to reduce how dystopian cities have become is to make them car free.
IIRC, part of the problem is that you need some way to get stuff to all those shops. It wasn't really ever an issue to have people there, for as long as I can remember, people were allowed to cross wherever they liked in that section of the street.
@@VanBurenOfficial "I am a car lover, as much as that may be an unpopular stance on this channel, I love driving, I love the convenience," gross
@@VanBurenOfficialthere are a few people who absolutely hate anything to do with cars (case in point above) but you can rest assure that they are nowhere near the majority, most people here don’t have a problem with cars themselves, just the way that infrastructure is built around them. In fact I think you’ll find that one of the arguments for public transit and such is that it would create less traffic, which would also be good for car users!
When I visited Vancouver's Granville Island public market for the first time I had a similar reaction. I looked around for discussions and there were so many fervent defenders of car access spanning the market, usually citing concerns for the elderly. As if there is no other possible way to accommodate the elderly other than huge parking lots dotted in and around the market.
Totally agree. The area surrounding the market is overly car centric and it would be amazing to see it re-planned in a way similar to Chamonix or other European towns where the ring road to the east of the bridge remains to give access to parking and the streets west of the bridge are blocked with retracting bollards so that only delivery trucks and other services have access. The only thing you lose is one parking lot and the constant threat of being run over by tourists searching for parking west of the bridge that is already full. Check an overhead view, spots near the market are always filled while there are lots sitting empty east of the bridge. Convert the surface area near the docks to open air market space, add an old timey street car as a nod to Vancouver's past to move people around and it would be an even bigger tourist attraction.
Probably the only time those people actually care about the elderly or disabled, when it suits their car dependency needs (and definitely not when it goes against that)
I was going to make a similar comment about Granville Island. If the concern was really about those with mobility issues, they could have only handicapped parking. A free shuttle between Granville island and waterfront station would also help.
Maybe it should all be handicap permits required, unless we do the really correct thing and allow only commercial vehicles and only part of the day.
I was one of the earliest tenants in the new Granville Is. I believe the mess of crawiing cars and pedestrians and delivery trucks has always been a part of the character of the place. It really couldn't be Granville Is if somebody didn't complain about the parking, or the seagull poop, or how it was better back when there was that neat woodworking shop on that corner.
Thank you for giving such great examples of the retractable bollards, I’ve been losing my mind explaining that absurdly simple solution to people for years when they bring up delivery/emergency vehicles. We waste so much time arguing about problems that have been solved a thousands times over in cities all over the world
The ignorance of thinking that nobody has ever considered deliveries or emergency access before. Or that existing car-free city centers happily function without them.
It's because of the American Exceptionalism that City Nerd says we should drop. Well "exceptional" is "as special as can be" in the American sense of itself and you know what "special" stands for. 😉😁😏
They're expensive and require someone to operate them. Never mind that this many businesses require a hell of a lot of deliveries - and not every contractor can have an RFID tag.
City Nerd pointed the way towards a solution in this video. As in 1971, Seattle needs a voter initiative to make Pike Place car free! Bypass the powers that be.
@@jrshaulI live in a Dutch town with a population of 35k and we have movable bollards on all entrances/exits to our town center. Note that there is no parking inside this area, but cars can enter for deliveries. The bollards go down automatically between 06:00 and 12:00 for deliveries/residents who need to move heavy stuff. After that they only open for permit holders and emergency vehicles. Works fine, we have had them for at least 20 years now.
I think someone should stick some flexi-posts up at the entrances and a sign saying "delivery vehicles only", add some street seats where the curb parking is and see how long it takes the city to notice and how much the people make a fuss when they remove it
I don't know but how COOL would it be if you could drive through Disneyland??
Thank you, I am a founding member of the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. This is low hanging fruit almost dropping to the ground. Even though I am in West Seattle I have attended Downtown Neighborhood Greenways meetings. Aside from the PPMA the downtown business association is very resistant to pedestrian zones. They have never seen the mass appeal and business benefits in places like Europe I suppose. It would not be a difficult task to schedule deliveries or set aside space for that need. The retractable bollards idea is a start. With the expansion of transit underground as well as the 3rd Ave. transit corridor the trip to the Pike Place Market is easier and more pleasant without a car. Get an Orca Card!
When the western end of Pearl Street in Boulder, CO was opened back up to cars the locals lost it. Our hatred for Pasta Jays surpassed even what we thought was possible
thoughts are that the boomer supported republican mayoral candidate was responsible for it lol
@@janvanhoyk8375 “Boomers” are a minority of the population and not monolithic in their thoughts. If things are happening politically, it is because people are letting it happen.
Mayors are basically useless but they can't be seen to be useless so they usually do something dumb like this. In my town we elected a "law and order" mayor to crack down on drug dealers, addicts and thieves and instead he tried to remove a bike lane.
@@barryrobbins7694 At this point, most of the damage was done decades ago.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade It’s our world now.
You should have a trigger warning on this for people in Seattle. I am guessing a lot of tourists simply type "Pike Place" into their GPS and the city stupidly let's them go directly to it. Most of the vendors are fine with closing it to vehicles. City council does not want to do anything about it though.
THIS. Our 1st visit to Seattle this happened to us. I was honestly just expecting some kind of parking sorta nearby, but nope, all of sudden you're just THERE and OMG IS THIS ROAD, AM I ALLOWED TO BE HERE!? WHAT IS HAPPENING!?
@@Turk380 There are a couple garages in the back, accessed from Western Ave.
This is my interpretation as well. Tourists want to visit it. It says it right on Google Maps, so that's where they drive. If the map said "closed to vehicles" then at least you'd give tourists a fighting chance to plan their driving and parking in the surrounding region, or god forbid take public transportation.
@@matthays9497 yep, we know that now. very easy to access once you know, you know.
Before Google Maps and smart phones were invented, tourists were still driving into the road directly by Pike place market. I do agree that it should be just be for pedestrians maybe even use some of the room for open air café.
Would love to see “Streets most in need of pedestrianization that currently allow cars”. Hard to make official, but at least finding some of the worst offenders, could even let viewers better recognize what to fight for in their own city.
great idea !
i always say that even the most walkable areas in my hometown can't measure up to the pedestrianized stratford-upon-avon town centre, for 1 major reason- in the latter there are structures that have been put up to discourage car traffic and keep cars out, while every historic walkable district/downtown area in my city STILL has a road running through it w/ sizable amounts of car traffic passing thru each day!
I live near Old Town Alexandria. While it's not Pike Place Market, it's still mind-boggling to me that almost three quarters of the street on King Street is dedicated to cars. Thankfully the city has made the last block car-free, but there's definitely enough pedestrian traffic to make the whole street from the metro to the waterfront car-free.
It's beyond time that most of King St. gets pedestrian barricades. It's sad that it's still one of the more walkable neighborhoods I've seen in the US.
I agree. As a Alexandria VA resident, i often wonder how we can motivate public pressure to make king st walkable and car free…. If anything during peak pedestrian traffic such as fridays and saturdays. Seriously, it would attract so many more people craving that atmosphere and be a boon to local businesses.
I had an idea while watching this: what if people who live in their van try to take up as much parking capacity with our vans on Pike Place as possible. Seattleites' love of parking and hate of the homeless might short circuit them into restricting vehicle traffic.
Thank you, Ray. I was in Seattle in (I think) 1994 and 1996, and walked or took public transit everywhere. People may not realize that it is a very hilly city. I was in shape to walk uphill, but my knees have never been good enough to make it possible for me to walk downhill comfortably. Just wanted to add something to the horror that is vehicle access in Pike Place Market. Those of us with asthma or who are very sensitive to smoke and pollutants cannot easily walk near cars - whether they are on a separate car road or mixed amongst pedestrians. If you don’t already have breathing problems, you will get them if you spend enough time breathing vehicle exhaust.
So what would people with asthma do in such a situation? Take the car?
@@repelsteeltje90 what i do: even before Covid, I wore a mask plus held a wad of tissues against my nose until i could get out of the area. I have held my breath until i get to cleaner air. The worst was when i was in Queenstown, New Zealand with a tour group. Our hotel was way up high on a hill and the road and sidewalk went straight down for a long way to get to the flat city area. Going uphill, where you are breathing more heavily, was miserable. Going downhill, where my bad knees force me to go slowly taking side steps so my feet don’t point straight down the hill, was worse. NZ might be such an ecological paradise, but it still (at least in 2018) lets trucks, large and small, billowing smoke, go up and down that hill. When i got home from that trip (which otherwise was wonderful), i got pneumonia and gad a really tough time.
Sorry to hear that, it sounds pretty bad.
Unfortunately most car-drivers just don't care.
@@repelsteeltje90 you got that right. “You got a problem - deal with it.”
As a lifelong Seattle local I also love Pike Place and always argue if I hear it described as a tourist trap. I didn’t realize the nonprofit is what keeps big chains out but it makes alot of sense, and something I’ll keep in mind.
PS: video concept suggestion. Suburbs or small towns that are “doing it right”. Aka growing in an “urbanist” way and moving away from car dependency. I had the idea walking around Bothell Landing in Bothell WA. Most of the buildings do have built in parking garages but I still think Bothell is doing something special and I imagine other places around the country could be to.
I actually have something like this in the queue!
We visited friends in Bothell and I was impressed with how walkable it was, even though their house was in a development that felt like it should have been isolated from the rest of the community without a car.
DuPont is another small city that has a great network of intentional trails and is surprisingly walkable.
I remember my mom first taking me to Pikes Place...while slowly driving in her Honda Civic, I kept saying "Mom what are you doing, we shouldn't be here" and she interpreted that as i didn't want to go and then we drove back to her apartment, being borderline non verbal at the time I went to my room and pouted because i got teased this cool experience rather then actually experiencing it.
Years later I got to go back, even tossed the fish and was very happy. I brought up this memory to my mom and she didn't remember the event or my reaction at all.
It makes me wonder if being car free would have intimated my mother too much and we never would have gone at all.
An Acceptable sacrifice for it to be car free tbh, thanks for the video CityNerd.
I live a block away from here and go there several times a week. Often the sidewalks are too packed to walk on, so I typically walk on the street, Pike Pl. Just the other day I had a woman come within inches of brushing up against me with her car as I was walking. I threw my hands up and shook my head at her as she passed. Within 30 seconds, she was stuck behind other cars that shouldn't be there. I went up to her driver side window, knocked to get her attention, then gave her a round of applause lol.
All it takes is for her to accidently mistake the accelerator for her brake, and I along with many others are dead.
The most fun thing about the cars on pike is the fact that they are always so mad they're being inconvenienced by pedestrians. I don't think I've ever visited pike when it's busy without at least one car yelling/honking
Maybe a good act of passive resistance would be for a large volunteer group to start installing barricades each morning. Something easily replaced as the city removes it. Pretty quickly I think all involved would realize it is way better without the cars.
@@texaswunderkind Or organize a critical mass of people who kind of linger in the crosswalk at the main entry points and refuse to move out of the way when cars approach.
26 year Seattle resident here. I once heard some dufus honk his horn while driving through the Market. His car was immediately surrounded by pedestrians who made their feelings about the matter quite clear.
Sometimes I will walk down the middle of the main street in the Market a lot slower than I normally walk just to be passive aggressive. Since I'm now in my 60s and look every day of it I can get away with it a lot more than when I first moved here - who's going to yell at an old man to move faster? 😝
@@davidgreenhow7811 🤣😂
@@Calipeixegatoi’ve actually considered doing this but with a crowd of bikers on stroads in downtown Portland without bike lanes (i’m looking at you west burnside)
CityNerd you are really understating how dangerous and disruptive the cars in the market can be. All one has to do is google the road rage incidents that happened there last year. I can tell you from personal experience you get to experience car induced sociopathy. I am at the market all the time and still I am amazed by people who will see a literal mob of pedestrians and still decide to bully their way through a crowd with a car. The market will one day be sued for its negligence to keep pedestrians safe.
Or people could just not walk not walk on the road...
@@specofdust1 Why are you even here if you don't get it.
@@lolololol7573 don't think that isn't that they don't get it and more like both drivers and pedestrians tend to do stupid at times
@@Jump-Shack The thing is, that person said specifically only people shouldn't walk on the road. Not that cars shouldn't bully their way through people. They are clearly in favour of the car and suggest that people should be the one to move out of the way as if car drivers own the streets (they do not).
@@lolololol7573 was more of assumption on my part : / but fair point
I've lived in Seattle nearly my entire life and just can't fathom why they don't restrict cars at all or even from 7am-9pm (for deliveries). Look at Borough Market in London or Chelsea Market in NYC if you want to see markets that work without cars driving right through the middle. And yes, thanks to the small businesses. Everyone from Settle must have purchased something from the magic or collectibles shop at one point in their lives, right? 3 cheers for the 3 Girls Bakery "Northwestern" sandwich too.
Because they never did. I haven't been there in years, but the problem was never a real problem. People were allowed to cross wherever they liked, which led to the street being a very slow street to drive on. Closing it down, has it's own issues for anybody that does need access to pick something up or drop it off as well.
This seems like one of those "problems" that pretty much exists because people need a reason to ban cars from more roads more than a real problem. Driving in that section of the city is already enough of an issue due to the one way streets and hills without creating another dead end.
Chelsea Market is less than two blocks from the West Side Highway --that's how the goods get there. The true success is that there's the Greenway and the High Line, basically pedestrian equivalents of freeways.
If I can't drive right up to the Pink Door and park ten feet away, is it even a restaurant?
Because cars are good and it would be stupid to restrict cars from streets.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade You summed it up real nicely.
We went through this issue in Buffalo, New York. There is a common belief in the USA that people won't patronize businesses or go shopping if they can't drive there. We had a transit mall in Buffalo that is having car access put back on (and retail is still not growing). The downtown transit mall was blamed for the loss of downtown retail despite the fact that contemporary to its construction we lost our two largest employers and suburbanization of retail had already been going for 20 years.
I would love to see a more in depth discussion of this pervasive belief regarding parking. I live in Jacksonville FL, and downtown development (such as it is) has been stymied by this pervasive belief that people won't walk 1-2 blocks from parking to the theater, restaurant, festival plaza etc. It's truly mind boggling.
A similar thing happened even in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, Australia where I live. There's an iconic street in St Kilda called Acland Street. It had been struggling for a long time, mostly due to high rents by greedy landlords and a loss of character due to bland national businesses replacing a lot of the quirky indie businesses that could no longer afford the rent. The city council then closed it to cars in 2016, turned one end into a pedestrian mall and also put a tram super-stop. It started revitalizing then obviously Covid killed it for a while, now it seems be coming back again, but everybody just blames the pedestrianization for "killing" the street and keep pushing to open it back up to cars again, completely ignoring the fact that the reason it was pedestrianized in the first place was because it was already dead WITH cars!
The issue here is that this is a non-issue. Due to people being allowed to cross wherever they like, it's not like people are going to be driving along this stretch very fast. It makes it a significant deterrent to anybody that is driving it as the next street over is a lot faster. It's been like this for as long as I can remember and I don't see why there needs to be a change, especially with how much of a pain it is to drive in that part of the city due to the one way streets and hills.
It is entirely correct that people won't patronize businesses or go shopping if they can't drive there. They won't patronize them if we can drive there, either. Retail is dead.
As someone who's either carrying my boss' camera equipment or a pile of power tools, there's no way in hell I'm parking two blocks away.@@terriellis3697
When I lived in Seattle in the late 80s, I loved haunting Pike Place - the cool shops, the hollering fish mongers, bands like Streetfire performing. It was a bit grittier back then but I'm a sucker for a gritty waterfront. I revisited it in recent years with the thought of moving back, but found it prohibitively expensive. If cars were to banished from the market, that could help elevate it in status. Make it truly world-class.
The video could have used the Byward Market in Ottawa instead and all your observations about how the experience is dulled by the presence of cars would apply just as well. It frustrates me more than I would like to admit that the market is filled with on street parking, parking garages, and car accessible streets while myself as a pedestrian cannot walk on 80% of the land or find a bench or table to sit and take in the beautiful architecture and street life. Also cannot forget to mention how the both markets also lack in green space and tree canopy as all that space is apparently better used for cars! Great video as always; thanks!
easy answer: because public spaces, in america, are built as basically tourist attractions. when a walkable area is built, people will DRIVE to it.
There are so many transit possibilities that would make a visit to a walkable location like the PPM a much more enjoyable experience.
The problem is not driving TO it, the problem is driving THROUGH it
@@repelsteeltje90driving to it is also a problem because it creates congestion around the area making it more difficult (and dangerous) to get in and out
@@repelsteeltje90 i meant generally this is the case with spaces like this all across the country, as i said "in America"
That isn't a horrible thing though, especially if it gives the rural people access to a walkable place. They should have access to such places. now if they are driving through it, that isn't helpful, and that is where a bypass road is a good idea.
Heck yeah - Seattle specific content!
Allowing cars to drive there is bad enough, but allowing PARKING instead of expanding the sidewalk is truly insane.
I've lived in Seattle 37 years. I'm surprised you didn't talk about the controversy when the city proposed closing Pine Street at Westlake to vehicular traffic. Nordstrom threatened to back out of taking over the former Frederick and Nelson Department store if the city closed the street, so the city backed down. Another lost opportunity in the city i love so dearly
A small city near me in England called Wells has a medieval market square which had been a car park before he pandemic. During the pandemic they made it car free and it’s such an insanely big improvement that almost no one wants to go back. The thing is it was proposed to make it car free many times over the years and every time it was the same predictable and (predictably wrong) arguments about shops dying due to lack of parking etc. This was in spite of the fact that the cars objectively ruined the look and feel of a beautiful square and the fact that the square had functioned perfectly well as a square for hundreds of years until cars came along. It was only the exceptional circumstance of the pandemic that allowed the change to happen politically.
The lesson is that when it comes to creating high quality pedestrian spaces you just have to go ahead and do it and don’t try to appease the naysayers.
And as for the people who genuinely value a few extra parking spots over human scale third places. Just ignore them.
You remind us that many pedestrian zones in Western Europe have had their car moment, they haven’t always been car-free, and fights had to be fought. This should encourage us inNorth America
Great video! It reminds me of my vacation to *Vancouver, BC, Canada* back in July of 2022 when I visited *Granville Island* and thought to myself that this space should mostly be car-free and that there was way too much unfettered motor access. These two public markets share a lot in common.
As someone who grew up and has always lived north of Seattle, Pike Place is so nostalgic to me, and I still love going when I have a chance. The *variety* of things there is what I love most - it's interesting how my tastes in things there have changed since I was a kid/younger adult -- just enough to give me something new I wanna take a look at each time I go.
Agreed. I was just there last Sunday and never get tired of it, but the fact that vehicle traffic is still allowed is insane.
During the summer, some of the parking spaces go away so they can be used for restaurant lines, at the oldest (not technically first) Starbucks, Proshky Proshky, etc. This really helps. Also there are some car-free Sundays in the summer, at least for the south couple blocks.
I love pike place market but I refuse to go there because of the ridiculous decision to allow cars. It's dangerous and an awful environment when you have to constantly watch for cars, or get pushed off a crowded sidewalk. Great video and hopefully somebody at city Hall will take notice.
I lived in Europe a few years ago. The city I was in was not as touristy as Seattle, but had about the same cold, rainy weather. Downtown in that European city was cut off to public vehicles. It was great! Occasionally as I was walking somewhere, I would pass by someone I knew and we would stop to chat for a few minutes. Other times, I would sit in a cafe and watch people walking past as I ate. It is hard to find that in most parts of the USA.
Update: To the people who keep replying asking which country in Europe I lived, that is not relevant to this topic.
I used to live in Europe a few years ago before Covid and that describes my experience as well.
In my travels to the US I have found that missing too. And I'm not even from Europe, I'm from Australia (albeit Melbourne which is often considered Australia's "most European" city). But here in Melbourne, even though the streets aren't cut off from cars, the streetscapes are generally defined by a LOT of sidewalk dining/seating for cafes, restaurants etc. When you walk down any main street, you're typically walking right between a business and its outdoor seating area, which creates a really vibrant atmosphere as you cross paths with waiters, hear the clinking of glasses and smell the coffee & food everywhere. You run into people you know, stop to sit for a beer or coffee, etc. And that's not just one particular touristy spot, that's literally every shopping strip within 10km of the city centre.
In the US, even in downtown areas I always felt like something was missing and then realised it was that, which was almost non-existent there. There was just no life or activity on the street in so many cities (with a few exceptions). Most cities might have one small touristy area like that (if they are lucky), but everything else is just designed for people to go from their car to the business and back.
mysterious city in Europe..
We just returned from Venice. The people outfit themselves for the walking environment by wearing comfortable shoes with no high heals and armed with umbrellas. With the first drop of rain, the umbrellas unfold. The shops have bins by the entrances to put your wet umbrella. My wife and I really enjoyed getting lost in the rain there. We are nearly 70 years old and found Venice and other Walkable cities in Italy invigorating. We miss that. I can relate to what you said.
Europe is a very vague description :D what country are you talking about?
I read a new article about some major US cities getting rid of (or at least considering) Parking Minimums/Mandates. Places like Austin, Anchorage, San Jose and even Gainesville, FL. Can we revisit this trend and see how, if any, economic changes take place in real world examples. And perhaps how cities can advance such notions if it make economic sense. Thanks
I lived downtown for years and actually bought groceries at pike place on Tuesdays when it wasn’t busy. I’ve wondered so many times what would happen if we just… put out tables, chairs and cones and started saying “nope, this are is for people now” … soooo many more people would stay and spend more money there if they could actually sit down
Like on Ballard Way, since Covid, the restaurants have taken over the street (still have one-way traffic though, for drop offs).
How can you be in a car and not have the situational/self awareness to know that you absolutely don't belong there? Like, rules be damned, I can't imagine driving through that and not having the constant feeling that I shouldn't be. It feels like supreme entitlement to disrupt the travel patterns of hundreds of pedestrians just to make way for your massive vehicle. And as much as I like to see places dominated by pedestrians where cars are the outsiders (I remember how pedestrians owned the intersections on my college campus, much to the chagrin of cars trying to escape), the power dynamics don't actually shift much, because at the end of the day the car is still a machine with the capacity to mow down those pedestrians, and it makes everything just that much more uncomfortable for everyone.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people who go there in a car just punched it into their GPS and by the time they realize how awful it is to drive on that street, they're already on it and have to keep going.
"I own a car for a reason damnit and it's my God-given right to drive it wherever I damn well please. I wish these stupid pedestrians would get out of the way." -people who drive through the market, probably
speaking from experience like this, sometimes you get directions and are *expecting* to only get so far and park somewhere nearby, but instead, SURPRISE! it's a road that takes you straight into the shitstorm and by the time you realize you fked up, you can't get away because of 1-way streets, bollards, or other obstacles.
@@Mir_Teiwaz I was in Seattle as a tourist that only walked to get around in the 1990s and I still saw a lot of cars in that road right before the market. And that was before Google and smart phones were invented so it can’t be just people taken there by the Google map.
@@enjoystraveling You were always allowed to drive there, even back when my mother had a shop. I'm not sure where people are getting their idea that it's something new or unique to tourists as we drove down there occasionally. But, it was and is essentially one giant cross walk, so it's not like you can drive very fast as people can and do cross wherever they like.
The market really reminded me of the Reading Terminal Market with the the added benefit of feeling more authentic and somehow less touristy.
My girlfriend and I were in Seattle for a day trip over from Bremerton on new years eve and we were complaining about how cars are still allowed down in the market! Crazy that 3 days later you make a video about it. I do enjoy that the market is being connected to the waterfront in the near future.
Fixing the parking problem:
Convert all parking spaces to disability access and delivery vehicles only. Send through someone multiple times a day to fine all the vehicles without a disability sticker, and give business owners a tag they can put on the dash of any delivery vehicles while they're there.
This is one of the few places this channel presents that legitimately should be made pedestrian only.
I'm an American who became an urbanist after working in Asia for most of my adult life. I moved back to America hoping to find something resembling urbanism, and ended up in Seattle. Pike Place Market is ultimately what convinced me that I'd be okay in Seattle. The Seattle area overall is better than most American cities, but still not great. But as long as you're close to Pike Place Market, you have one pocket of good urbanism you can access, and that feels like about as good as it's going to get in the US outside of the ultra-unaffordable areas like NYC.
There are tons of Rustbelt and small towns across the Midwest and Northeast where you can have walkability for a low price. Just have to temper your expectations. I remember my last trip to Japan, where even the small to medium sized cities were walkable, and had great urbanism, but besides the better convineince stores, it wasn't all that different in terms of walk ability compared to where I live here in the US.
@@linuxman7777not to put you on the spot, but do you have any personal examples? I've been up and down the rust belt and generally don't see many non-car centric places outside small towns with a single main street. I'd love to see the other places!
@@carlr458 well Walmart did kill off small towns and medium sized cities across the country. I consider walkable if I can get to my daily needs in a walk, which means basically is there a grocery store I can walk to. Parks are nice too to have. And for me, I can walk to the Ymca where I live.
Some great places to look at would be Meadville P.A, Andover Ohio, Bedford PA, Mcdonald PA, Latrobe PA, Williamsport PA.
These places should all be very cheap, and quite walkable. Although you will have to scale back your lifestyle and live more like it is 1990 in terms of what to expect.
@@carlr458As a Pittsburgh resident, I think it’s a good example. Pretty much every neighborhood in the city, as well as some of the inner ring suburbs, are walkable and connected. And we got decent, if not pretty good, transit depending on where you live.
@@thedapperdolphin1590 Pittsburgh has gotten expensive these past few years. I do like Pittsburgh alot, but it can be unrealistic for many people. Some of the towns I listed are affordable walkable towns in the Pittsburgh Area.
Kensington Market in Toronto (a hopeless city) has had this exact problem for generations. Narrow streets bustling with crowds of people, but of course vroom-vroom machines have to be able to roll through.
OMG! I was just there in November and did a guided food tour with a local. I asked him this exact same question: why isn't Pike Place Market car free!? 😅
I live a couple of blocks from the Pike Place Market and thus visit it very often. I get outrageous every weekend because of how hard it is to squeeze past all the cars, having to watch to not get rolled over by one of them, all while seeing huge crowds on a narrow sidewalk.
Was just at pike place the other week and I was amazed by tourists taking RVs down the street to drop off their families! Love the market and thanks for making this video
they're from out of town, how are they supposed to know? Google maps doesn't tell them it's a small street and once engaged they can't turn back. This is not a case where we can blame tourists, it's poor city planning
Love the market. As a local, I walk down the middle of the street, not the slow sidewalk or arcade. As a result, I find myself paying as much attention to not getting run over as I do the people and environment around me. Given the extremely slow speed of the cars this is not difficult, but it is a tiring and unwelcome distraction. I'm concerned about the possibility of an accident someday. On those few summer days where they do close the street to traffic it is so much nicer.
I have the same question about Old Town Pasadena. It is 75% pedestrianized and it's very weird that they haven't gone the final 25%. Speaking of LA, the Farmers Market (the fixed one at 3rd and Fairfax) had a rule for a long time against allowing any chains in. Somehow Starbucks sneaked in a small space but that seems to have caused a reaction and no more chains have come in. What I'm sure is problematic for the businesses there is finding workers who can afford to live within commuting distance. I imagine over time that's gonna be a very tough problem for all retail.
When employees have two hour commutes, you pay them for the two hour commute - one way or the other.
Pike Place looks pretty much like any nice pedestrianized market area over here in Europe. It looks pretty much like the entire pedestrianized city center of my home town in the Netherlands. Except for the presence of cars. It could be so much better if it were car free.
It's really illustrative that apparently people feel so strongly about the freedom to drive literally everywhere that they can't even fathom that it's also nice to be free from cars in just some areas.
This reminds me of old tsukiji market when I was in Japan, where cars are still allowed to barrel through heavy pedestrian areas (albeit smaller cars)
I live in York England and can still remember in the 80's the opposition to pedestrianisation of the city centre - now the city is looking to make more of the fringe of the centre car free.
Cities need to ignore the car lobby and think of the benefits - there has been a very vocal minority here in York complaining about roads being shut to traffic because they are ' rat runs' but at the local council elections no mainstream party campaigned for them to be re - opened - local people saw the benefits and voted accordingly.
Having visited the US I'm amazed at the space given over to the car in the city centres.
I had a taste of how Seattle can get people to take transit to Pike Place Market. I was in the DC metro area for New Years and decided on Sunday to go to Union Station for lunch. They announced on the morning news that Metrorail was having a $2 fare day for New Year's Eve, and my hotel was two blocks from the new Silver Line, so yeah. I hadn't been to Union Station since the farewell to the AEM-7 locomotives excursion in 2016 and wanted to see what had happened since the devastation of the pandemic shutdown years. I spent 14 years working for Amtrak in OBS out of Union Station in the '80s and '90s, so I was there when it was fully renovated and reopened in 1988, and was there as a visitor for the 100th anniversary right before I moved back to Ohio in 2008. I spent many hours and parts of days there over the years, so it's a place I have known well.
Anyway, I took Metro there because it now costs $25 to park in the deck for any part of a day. The round trip on Metro, including the purchase of a plastic fare card was $6, which more than made up for my shockingly expensive lunch at Au Bon Pain. I know there are cheaper places to eat there, but I didn't go all the way to DC to have lunch at Micky D's, and I wanted to eat somewhere I couldn't normally eat in Akron, Ohio. I know Metrorail is having problems, but it was fine on Sunday, trains were running on 10 minute head ways, and once I got on a train I was in Union Station in 45 minutes, including the transfer at Metro Center. So Seattle, make it hurt really bad to park at Pike Place and that will help ease the traffic woes there.
Thanks for making this video! I worked as one of Sur la Table's warehouse guys in 1989. One of my best memories is coming into work on a snowy day. The only people there besides me were the Pike Place Fish folks who were throwing fish around regardless of the lack of audience. I totally agree cars should be banned except for delivery vehicles. While there are lockers for merchants, they need to be restocked. Sur la Table had outgrown their locker. I had to bring merch from their warehouse to the store a couple of times a day in the owners Subaru Legacy wagon.
Imagine trying to get an HVAC guy.
Very similar to Granville Island Market in Vancouver. Pike Place has been one of my favourite places to visit in Seattle for decades. I too have wondered why they have not had the courage to make it car free (Vancouver's Granville Island Market has the same problem).
That's exactly my plight, eliminating Through Traffic inside neighborhoods. Understand that it doesn't mean banning cars. But this simple measure will change cities like water to wine.
The area of Fremont St in LasVegas that has been car free for 20 years or so is a great example of how much better car free streets in America can be
you nailed it on the head. they did that out of desperation as they were loosing to the strip and so they decided on this hale mary to convert it into a pedestrian mall. many years later it is a success. imagine that.
People in these circles really love to talk about how amazing Europe is, but Europe is really guilty of this in a lot of cases. Those damn motorbikes will go literally everywhere.
This comes up all the time on the subreddit. You might know more, but apparently it was attempted in 2011 for a month. The vendors in the "Down Under" lost _a lot_ of foot traffic. Because the street was so nice, people weren't "pushed" deeper into the market.
This doesn't mean we should keep allowing cars; but there might need to be some sensitivity as to how to handle the outstanding leases on the Down Under locations.
And we've found the real reason. This should be a pinned comment or mentioned in the video. A lot of times things that look stupid actually aren't.
That just seems crazy to me since I loved wandering the shops down under when I worked nearby, but at the same time, I can understand that the American novelty would keep people gasping for fresh air so to speak
@@GeotpfOr they just are stupid. Even with the example given, it was an experiment they tried for a month. That’s certainly not enough time to understand the issue or test other solutions to daring people further into the market.
I think Pike Place has to be accessible to cars, because it is a market, and sometimes people do need to drive down if doing major food shopping.
I mostly take transit downtown, for example, in Toronto. However, on Saturdays when I go to the St Lawrence Market, I tend to drive down, because I am buying bags of heavy groceries, and the parking (and cheap $1.00 rate) right near the market helps out. So, if you want to maintain the market as more than just a tourist attraction, and a real place to do shopping, then I think the parking is needed in this case.
Here in New Orleans we have two parallel streets in the French Quarter called Royal Street and Bourbon Street, both of which are pedestrian streets that are sometimes open to cars, Bourbon Street being the most frequently open, and the character of each street changes from a nice promenade to a regular street with narrow sidewalks and lots of pedestrians. It's really annoying to both pedestrians and motorists because the pedestrians have to get out of the way of the cars and the motorists have to crawl behind pedestrians.
But still those streets aren't as chaotic as Pike Place where the cars really need to be banned so the development doesn't choke on its own success.
Seattle has become a top 15 US metro area, and it's only going to grow in prominence. The plans for its subway system are otherworldly..
I lived and worked right near Pike Place Market for 10 years back in the 1990's. I was there for the WTO riot of 1999. Tear gas coming right into my apartment window at times. But other than that it was the only city where I had a truly pedestrian lifestyle. I walked everywhere and only used my car on weekends for recreation. I haven't been back since the Alaska Way viaduct came down but I'd sure like to see how that changed things.
Do you think it’d be possible to turn downtown areas back into how they were pre-car era? Where roads were either pedestrian traffic or cable cars? You would need big lots on the perimeter of the downtown area for people who want to drive to the city, but for the land you lose for that you can gain back from all the parking lots in the city center that you can now develop. It would also be so much safer to walk around in city center areas.
It's possible but it takes a lot of political will (voters like us) and most gen-z/millennials around here are carbrained. Realistically I don't see it happening before I kick the bucket, and I'm a millennial.
It’s more possible in newly built developments than in existing downtown, simply due to all the existing entrenched interests.
"Do you think it’d be possible to turn downtown areas back into how they were pre-car era?" So around 1900? Even by 1910-20 there were plenty of cars.
I studied this situation a little in graduate school. There used to be streetcars running through all the cities. (Judy Garland in “Meet Me in St. Louis”: sang “Clang clang clang went the trolley.” When General Motors wanted to increase sales of cars a hundred years ago, it bought the trolley system in Los Angeles just to rip it up and force people to drive. My mother took the trolley to work in Pittsburg in the early 1940’s. When I was growing up in Schenectady, NY in the 1960’s, my grandmother and i took the bus everywhere. We have slidden so far backwards.
@@birbluv9595 Yes, there were trolleys and buses before ... everybody became rich enough to afford a car, and then two cars, and then two cars plus another for the teenage drivers. Trolleys and buses didn't disappear because of a conspiracy, they disappeared because the country got wealthier and people *wanted* to drive themselves. Perhaps most modern people can be persuaded that their grand-parents and great-grandparents made a mistake when they took to the roads, but let's not pretend most people were forced or tricked into becoming drivers.
I very, very rarely comment on RUclips videos, but I have been complaining about this same idea for YEARS! I am so glad someone else sees the insanity of both people thinking it's a reasonable practice to drive through this high pedestrian traffic area, and the people in charge who are continually letting this happen. Unfortunately, I'm sure it'll take a tragic accident before people actually make a change. There have already been road rage incidents on this very road!
What a great week for you to cover Seattle! Happy New Year and Go Dawgs!! 💜
Granville Island has similar issues.
In Toronto, the city has proposed plans to slightly reduce vehicle access to Kensington Market, but many of the small business owners are lobbying against it
I love Seattle, too. Welcome back, and Happy New Year!
Back in the late 70s the city of Denver decided to convert one of its busy downtown streets into a long pedestrian mall with frequent free mall shuttle service. The 16th st. mall continues to be a success these days. However at the end of the day small business will always have the final say so as small business is the backbone of commerce. Many large malls have been torn down over the last 20 years to make room for big box stores with store front parking.
The 16th St Mall was so much better back in 1990 when the Tabor Center Mall & Food Court were thriving. I went back a few years ago and was highly disappointed.
I've been to Seattle a few times. Every time I've been to Pikes Market Place. It's always very busy on the sidewalks so I attempt to walk in the street but immediately move back to the crowded sidewalk because there's a car inching behind me but a slight bit faster than walking pace. It is so annoying and I wish they'd just install some mechanical bollards so only delivery vehicles can enter the area.
If you ever make it out to Pittsburgh, the Strip District has a similar role in the city and has a lot of the same problems. It definitely falls into that same space of “if we can’t pedestrianize This, then what are we even doing”
I always thought those streets should instead be like Washington Street in Boston (ie "Downtown Crossing") where only small commercial vehicles and emergency vehicles are allowed.
Thank you Ray for an excellent video. I watch as a British viewer resident in central Nottingham. For once I found myself thinking, 'Regarding pedestrianising shopping streets. thank goodness we in Britain have NOT followed the US example - rather we have followed our continental European neighbours.'
I had this exact same thought when I was visiting the Village in Big Bear, CA during the holidays at night. It's a cool downtown area in a small mountain town that puts up lights during the holidays, and it was absolutely jam packed when I went. But despite this, they kept the street open to cars and confined everyone else to the sidewalks. There was just this line of cars down the middle of the street that was barely moving at all because of the amount of pedestrians in the stop sign junction up ahead, and I was just like, if traffic moves so slow that you have to take side streets to get anywhere anyway, what's even the point of keeping it open to cars? Just close it and let us have a nice thing.
Reminder that VPNs have nothing to do with privacy or security and unless you want to access restricted content (such as, say, a different country's Netflix lineup) then you probably don't need a VPN.
Thanks for all your videos, CityNerd. I looked up your name, but I prefer Nerd :-) Happy New Year, and may your urban steps be endless. You provide a great service and your dry humor is loved and appreciated.
I LOVE ALL OF THIS! When we visited Seatlle, I couldn't believe the streets around Pike Place Market were open to vehicular traffic and street parking. All I could think was "why the hell are they making it hard for me to walk around here?" Get rid of the cars (businesses can accept deliveries in the mornings before a specified time or evenings after a specified time) and the parking spaces and allow people to walk freely without fear of getting hit by cars! But, this is 'murica and it is every 'murican's God-given right to be free to drive our big cars and trucks anywhere we want! (I hope the sarcasm comes through strong enough there).
The car side of this reminds me of Granville island in Vancouver, full of cars too, and cement trucks
It’s remarkable that banning cars from popular shopping streets is still not universal here in the US. This was implemented all over Europe starting in the mid 1980’s all over Europe when they realized that great city shopping streets or special historic districts cannot be open to normal car traffic. I was in Florence Italy back in 1987 and they had just stated banning cars from the entire old city center. It’s not like it’s a hardship. My wife has mobility issues and uses a walker. None the less we could cross the entire old city core in less than 20 minutes. It’s made the city absolutely wonderful to explore on foot. Every other major city has found streets that need to be car free to work. Amsterdam, Milan, Vienna, you name it… still we insist on trying to squeeze cars into places they don’t fit here in the US.
in Canada we shun European ideas too😢
@@garyholt8315I It's getting better. Montreal has made a bunch of spaces car free. Some are seasonal, some are year round. There IS progress... it does help that most European city's old care are smaller, so they lend them selves better to removing or minimizing car traffic.
my thought for the whole merchandise transportation issue is to have an alley or tramway accessing the rear of the storefronts, that the store operators use for bringing merchandise into the stores. another thing that markets could learn from Disney is to have either a locker service or courier service, where shoppers could either have stores hold merchandise for them, or deliver it to a pickup spot. this would be particularly helpful for people with mobility issues, as well. finding ways to increase the range people with mobility issues can easily go without a car would increase the area carless zones could cover.
My idea has always been to hand out leaflets to cars foolish enough to enter Pike Place from First Avenue which say "WELCOME TO SEATTLE! We're assuming you are visiting, since locals already know that it is not advisable to drive through the Market, as it is heavily congested with pedestrians, and has very little available on-street parking. To make your next visit to the Market more pleasant, please consider parking at one of the nearby garages, or using the numerous transit options available from all parts of the region". The purpose of "assuming" people are visiting is to shame locals into being perceived as "tourists" (which everyone in Seattle claims to hate!) and so to avoid the embarrassment of being thought of as a "tourist", maybe the locals wouldn't choose to drive through a place which was CLEARLY not intended for cars. But in recent years, Seattleites have become so self-absorbed, that maybe even this wouldn't be enough to shame them out of their car-centric habits.
mind boggling that anyone would think driving thru a crowd of people is a good idea
On top of being worse for everyone else because of cars' presence it also looks like a nightmare to drive through. Truly a lose-lose situation.
May I suggest submitting a comment to the organization directly? They have a place for that at the bottom of their long cheery home page.
Lived in Seattle in the 80s. It was hard to find parking then; it's almost impossible now! Take public transportation or park elsewhere and walk. My daughter just went there and went to the Daily Dozen, where they make mini donuts for you while you wait (a few minutes) just like I used to take her there growing up. I say if you go take a whole day and tour the outdoor sculpture garden and go down to the piers too. Maybe take the ferry to Bainbridge Island and back.
Ablist much?
@@DanaTheInsane Car dependency is ablist.
I appreciate that they didn’t make it into a museum despite the overt shift from working class to yuppy class (however you want to define it). I’ll probably visit just to say I did & then walk around the rest of the neighborhood for all the missed opportunities left for those willing to take some risks.
It's funny to see how public markets in the US are devolving...first they were farmers markets with produce. Then this changed to include vendors with prepared/packaged items...then this changed to counter service restaurants...then table service restaurants...and now some markets have non-food items. Maybe this isn't so bad...as long as independent/natural produce vendors are not squeezed out by chain restaurants. Either way public markets have been a US success story...Milwaukee has a relatively new one and it is crazy popular and crowded.
Milwaukee is interesting because when I first moved there in 2006 the Public Market had a lot of independent vendors and farmers. The recession from 2008 to 2009 hit hard, and within a few years it moved to largely prepared foods and goods. It is popular as a gathering space, but it feels like a manufactured public space of boutique food and goods. I'm not saying that it's all bad, but it's just an extension of the rest of the Third Ward's gentrification, which still has plenty of car access.
Is there any fresh produce grown within ten miles of Pike Place? I'm thinking its days as a genuine farmers' market ended long ago for a reason.
Shopping mall. The term you're looking for is "shopping mall."
Ocean Drive on Miami Beach is another prime example. Thankfully it was only opened up to one way traffic, allowing large two-way bike lanes on the other half.
But seriously, Ocean Drive doesn't need any cars at all.
This is a brilliant style of analysis. What a great channel. Ty CN u rule
I grew in Seattle, and as an adult lived a couple of blocks away from Pike Place, so I'd walk through there nearly every day. It's truly a special place! Some of the the nearby restaurants get their fish, meat, and veggies from vendors there. Living so close by, I did all my produce shopping there as it was closer than any grocery store in terms of walking distance-and in general the produce prices were on par with the nearby grocery chains anyway (with some exceptions). When the market first re-opened after the pandemic but tourism hadn't restarted yet, multiple vendors told me that locals came through to support them in droves, shopping to help keep the market alive. There's an amazing community to the market, and I hope that never goes away. ❤
I was there twice a week even at the start of the pandemic. Sadly, my produce stall closed up shop last year. It was always more expensive, but what you got was personalized service. Like I'd tell them, "I need three avocados... two that are really soft and one that won't ripen for like a week or so." Or, "What is that and how do you cook it?" And they'd give you samples to try new stuff... and remembered what I liked and let me know they just got some in and hadn't put it out yet. That's what I love about the Market... though it's full of tourists, it's also a vibrant part of the actual local economy.
It's crazy that this was ever slated for demolition. I'm from Spain where every town and city of any size has a market square at its heart. It's the last thing you would demolish. Although if everyone shopping at the market has to drive to get there, it stops being functional and you might as well drive to Walmart. So I guess it's not surprising that U.S. cities lack them.
It’s crazy how much Seattle turned itself around since 1970
It's always frustrating when businesses can be so short-sighted about pedestrianizing spaces. What sounds more appealing - having a walkable space that hundreds of people can stroll around and enjoy, or having 2-4 parking spaces that only let in a few people at a time? It gets more frustrating when people try to play the disability card by taking away parking. Think about it - how many people are there who HAVE to drive everywhere because of a disability vs. how many people who CAN'T drive anywhere because of a disability. I have a hard time believing the former category is anywhere in the same stratosphere as the latter.
Pike Place always reminded me of a West Coast Kensington Market. We're having the same issue here with pedestrianisation - everybody wants it, but the status quo is tough to fight against.
Why cars are still allowed in Pittsburgh's Market Square is absolutely baffling to me.
You could make a very similar video investigating why Old Town ABQ isn’t pedestrianized.
Well said. We tend to avoid the market street because of jostling crowds on the narrow walk and the motor traffic nudging its way through the crowds. Why not permit deliveries only at restricted hours?
Wish Fell's Point in Baltimore could get rid of the parking since it's a great place to walk, but I think the merchants would complain too much
That’s one of the best things I did in Seattle to get rid of that Alaskan way, which was blocking the view and had very loud noise I was only a tourist back several decades ago I came to Seattle for my first time and staying in the youth hostel, and I don’t know if it’s still there, but to get to the ferry boat I had to cross the awful streets that were really hard to get across
Meant to write that’s one of the best things They did not I did.
In many a European area that is remotely similar to this, cars can still go through: slowly, and uncomfortably. They just get rid of the separation of sidewalk and street, and have zero public parking allowed. A delivery vehicle can come in and stop. The apartments in the area which somehow have underground parking just have space for themselves, so the drivers are always the same, know they don't have the right of way, and go really slowly. So it's not unlike how in most streets in America, the pedestrian knows no driver will stop for them, but in reverse.
Make parking impossible in the area, and traffic incredibly slow, and the cars go away on their own.