MONCTON -- Just seven weeks after the initial reconfiguration, businesses on Moncton’s Main Street are calling on the city to return things to normal.
The pilot project reducing Moncton’s Main Street to one-way traffic was put in place less than two months ago, with the hope of attracting more people to the downtown district, just as businesses were starting to reopen amid the pandemic.
“This has not happened due to this, and this is what we’re hearing- they want it back to two-ways traffic, and they would like to have the on-street parking accessibility back as well,” says Anne Poirier Basque, executive director of Downtown Moncton Centre-ville Inc.
The project was supposed to run until September 21, but a petition signed by 26 businesses in the area is asking for the street to return to normal, as soon as possible.
“It’s pretty much all the businesses on Main Street itself,” says Poirier Basque. “I think what they’re alluding to, is the fact that if you cut traffic off of your Main Street, if you close anything, you’re closing access to business.”
Katelyn Daigle manages a boutique on Main Street. She says she was all for the petition after receiving multiple complains for customers.
“I definitely didn’t hesitate in signing it, because it’s definitely affected our business, and we hate to see customers complaining about trying to get down here,” says Daigle.
With COVID-19 limiting the number of tables inside restaurants, the idea was to make more room for patio expansions. But Daigle questions if testing a new project during a pandemic was the right move.
“This was probably the worst time something like this could happen,” says Daigle. “Businesses were already struggling, most of them had been closed for two months, so to try a pilot project, it’s just not the time to take that kind of risk. It’s the time to just go about business as normal as we can.”
Moncton mayor Dawn Arnold says she’s heard arguments both for, and against the reconfiguration.
“One of the restaurants that chose to build out and extend their café way out, they said that it’s great for their servers because no bikes are on the sidewalk now, so they’re not having interactions there. So there’s been positive and negative,” says Arnold.
Poirier Basque says she hopes city council will listen to the request for change.
“I think we have to support our downtown businesses and hear and listen to what they would like to see happening,” says Poirier Basque.
Arnold says if council agrees, the first reading to possibly revert the bylaw could happen at next Monday’s council meeting, with the second reading being held on August 24.
But Poirier Basque says she and many of the businesses are hoping the city can expedite the process in the hopes of not losing any more possible profit.
