City of Madison
A snapshot from a past Cars on State Street event gives an idea of what a pedestrian mall might look and feel like.
Next summer, pedestrians and bicyclists could be free to roam the bottom half of State Street, with all vehicles except emergency and paratransit vehicles banned between Gorham Street and Hawthorne Court.
“We’re looking at how we can do this relatively affordably,” city planner Dan McAuliffe said at a Dec. 4 public meeting where he unveiled early concepts for a pedestrian mall experiment. “We’re not rebuilding the street as a result.” Instead of cutting curbs to join the sidewalk and street, the city will open the street to bicycles and pedestrians, keep the sidewalk closest to businesses open, and expand restaurant dining areas.
The city is proposing to paint the road, add benches and use large planters at the ends of blocks to prevent traffic from turning into the mall. Officials would also encourage busking and street vending, and create places designed for photo-taking. The pedestrian mall experiment may only run on certain days or certain times of day, with the exact schedule yet to be determined. Public feedback over the next several months will guide the plan, which would be implemented in 2024.
A redesign of the city’s bus system that routed buses away from the 400-600 blocks of State Street led to an exploration of what was possible with the new space. “After Metro Transit moved buses off State, there was kind of that broader community conversation about what should happen,” McAuliffe says in an interview. “The Downtown Coordinating Committee led that investigation of what really was possible.”
That group surveyed the neighborhood and found broad support for a pedestrian mall, though some businesses expressed concern about delivery access. The city is planning for deliveries to be allowed during certain times, though those have yet to be determined. Deliveries are currently prohibited on State Street between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to encourage dining.
With the buses gone, outdoor dining areas for State Street restaurants can be expanded all the way to the curb. Previously, says McAuliffe, a buffer zone between dining space and the street was needed: “We wanted to make sure no one would get hit by bus mirrors or anything like that.”
Bicycles and pedestrians will likely get to share the street without designated lanes. “What we’ve heard so far is it might be best to not plan on specific facilities for bikes and specific facilities for pedestrians,” McAuliffee says. He says designated areas for bikes in pedestrian malls can encourage higher speeds, potentially risking more serious collisions.
Some community members want the city to use the experiment as a way to attract more people of color downtown. “There would have to be some culturally relevant food, culturally relevant entertainment options, both of which are completely lacking on State Street,” said Alan Robinson, co-founder of Herbal Aspect, at the meeting. “You won’t find any barbecue, you won’t find any soul food.”
“We’ve heard that State Street isn’t always as welcoming to all of our residents, and we definitely want to make it that way,” responded McAuliffe.
Staff plans to meet with the Downtown Coordinating Committee in January to present feedback, and other committees after that. A website for the project is expected in the next week or so, and more meetings are planned to gather feedback. The city also released a survey to gather additional input from the community over the next few months.
The plans would have to be completed in early 2024 for implementation by the summer.
Once the pedestrian mall is in place, the city will use anonymized GPS information from cell phones to measure how many people use the mall. It will also evaluate the experiment by distributing another survey, and report results back to the city council.
