2 weeks Ago
By Brian C. KeeganIn his February 27 guest opinion, Councilmember Mark Wallach claimed that closing West Pearl Street to vehicular traffic caused a reduction in patrons and revenue. But there’s one tiny factor that his column completely ignores: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blaming pedestrian-friendly street designs for pandemic-era disruptions is another example of Mr. Wallsch’s penchant for fashionable fabulations. But it also distracts us from a more important question: How can we build a more vibrant and sustainable Boulder?The pandemic experiment of closing West Pearl to cars between April 2020 and September 2022 should have been a template for piloting other pedestrianization projects across Boulder.
Instead, it was prematurely ended over the objections of residents and its successes for businesses.If we truly want to understand the impact of pedestrianizing West Pearl, we should take its experimental character seriously. That means comparing times and places where cars were restricted (a treatment group) to when and where they weren’t (a control group).
Luckily, Boulder has the sales tax and pedestrian count data to make these comparisons.First, pedestrian areas didn’t fare worse during the pandemic. In 2020, sales tax revenue dropped 40.
7% on Pearl Street — a decline almost identical to the Downtown district surrounding Pearl Street (-40.3%) and the car-centric 29th Street shopping district (-39.3%).
If pedestrian-centered and car-centered districts had similar pandemic revenue crashes, then we can reject Mr. Wallach’s “vehicular access” hypothesis.Second, walkable areas bounced back faster from the pandemic.
Between 2020 and 2021, Pearl Street’s tax revenue grew 52.7%, far outpacing Downtown’s 35.3% and 29th Street’s 19.
8% rebounds. By 2023, Pearl Street had exceeded its pre-pandemic revenue. The Downtown and 29th Street districts still haven’t recovered — despite their supposedly essential car-centered infrastructure.
Third, foot traffic on West Pearl skyrocketed during the pedestrian-only period. In 2021, more than 2.5 million people walked past Pearl and 11th — up 146% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
By contrast, the non-pedestrianized East Pearl saw a 38% drop in foot traffic over the same pandemic period.Finally, foot traffic growth slowed when West Pearl was reopened to cars. From 2021 to 2023, foot traffic at Pearl and 11th increased by only 5%.
Meanwhile, the traffic at Pearl and 15th saw a 9% increase over the same period. Turning West Pearl back over to cars didn’t bring the promised flood of visitors.Critics can cite an April 2022 city memo showing West Pearl’s tax revenue declined 41% compared to 2019, while East Pearl was up 42%.
But that memo also noted that many West Pearl restaurants had permanently closed during the pandemic, skewing these numbers. Financials from the West Pearl businesses that stayed open throughout likely tell a different story.What did business owners say about the West Pearl experiment? In that same 2022 staff memo, 72% of restaurants and 65% of retailers said pedestrianization was a positive change — bringing more foot traffic and activity, with no reported drop in sales.
It’s surprising these businesses now oppose resurrecting a more vibrant West Pearl.Another critique is that longer pedestrian malls aren’t viable. It’s true that a 2021 study of 125 pedestrian malls found that longer malls were more likely to fail.
But the same study also showed that malls in cities with higher density, younger, wealthier and whiter populations, and sunny weather were significantly more likely to succeed. According to this model, Boulder’s rapidly greying population and habituated opposition to in-fill development pose a greater threat to Pearl Street’s future than a modest increase in length.Mr.
Wallach characterized reverting West Pearl to its more successful configuration as “the most self-indulgent initiative to ever be put in front of the Boulder electorate” because its proponents “find walking on sidewalks to be an undue burden.” Boulder deserves better arguments than Mr. Wallach’s crass condescension that collapses under the simplest scrutiny.
If we are serious about building a more vibrant and sustainable Boulder, let’s invest in solutions that work. We need more safe, walkable, mixed-use spaces throughout Boulder where residents and visitors alike want to linger, shop and dine — not noisy and car-choked corridors that prioritize parking over placemaking.Please support the Pearl for You campaign.
Brian C. Keegan, Ph.D.
is a computational social scientist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder..
