News   Apr 03, 2020
Pastel Morning
 4.8K     1 
News   Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 6.6K     3 
News   Apr 02, 2020
Soon to be Gone
 3.8K     0 

Lilacfest 2023

Surrealplaces

Surrealplaces

Administrator
Staff member
Member Bio
Joined
Sep 24, 2015
Messages
12,738
Reaction score
73,530
Location
Calgary
I don't have any photos myself, but was passing by the area today. It was massively busy...maybe the busiest I've ever seen it.


from https://twitter.com/JeffreyFDunn
Deytk4sUEAAqz2R.jpg





from https://twitter.com/SimpleSimpleAds
Fxz5Wf1aYAAgOs5.png




from https://twitter.com/everydaytourist
FxyHAUBaIAEoVWB.jpg



Not at the festival itself, but nearby. Downtown was big time buzzing this afternoon.
IMG_3352.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I went to the lilac festival, and buzzing is a good way to describe it. Super busy, and if I’m being honest, may be a bit too busy.
Either way, it’s nice to see so many people downtown out and about.
 
Beltline_B said:
The lilac festival was crazy busy today. I don’t mind it being jammed to the hilt, but I would like to say to those people who bring their dog on a leash. Don’t.
I love seeing people out walking their dogs, just not at the Lilac festival.
Click to expand...
A couple of thoughts to improve Lilac Festival:

Improve pedestrian circulation - Lilac Fest is already huge and often uncomfortably crowded, it doesn't help that the existing public space is cluttered with curbs, bins, poles and for one day only - tents, generators, signs, extension cords, and all sorts of stuff that impedes pedestrian flow further.
  • I get that the big crowds are kind of the point - but it's to the level where I am questioning the safety of the event (let alone more individual issues that arise with dogs, strollers and all sorts of people with mobility or health issues crammed into the hot mass of people)
  • Remove all the clutter where ever possible and expand things out a bit - gives more flexibility, capacity to relieve crowds in emergencies.
Improve vehicular circulation and general access, by expanding the pedestrian-only zone to the whole neighbourhood(s) and ensuring transit is available.
  • Vehicles can still get far to close to the major festival to the benefit of no one - crippling congestion, idling cars on all side streets, all in search of a few dozen parking stalls for a crowd of 100,000. The math doesn't make sense to have personal vehicles play any role here, apart from emergency access and special mobility needs.
  • The street closures are still too small given the volume of people - perhaps close all of Mission-Cliff Bungalow to all by local vehicles and busses, including 5th Street and 2nd Streets. This offers more capacity to relieve pedestrian volumes on the main strip.
  • Red Line was closed for maintenance once again during the major weekend event. I would guess that some form of LRT closure has occurred on about 90% of all Lilac Fest weekends the past 20 years. Weekend transit needs to be take seriously especially given the size of the event and others like it.
Ultimately I would like to see this type of event being incorporated into how we actually build these main streets. Low-profile curbs, wider sidewalks, more consistent street furniture/junk zone - all these things can go a long way to support increasing day-to-day activity as the area grows and make the street more capable of having huge surges in pedestrian volumes from time to time.
 
I think organizers need to be more selective about the vendors. It needs to be more curated. The event would be better with 50-75% of the tents. Leave more room for circulation (gaps between tents at mid-blocks for people to move to the sidewalk). A complaint I’ve had about Calgary’s festivals since moving here from Toronto is that they lack entertainment.
 
I was at Lilac Festival and it was indeed bonkers. The extensions on 17th were quieter last year, but this year they were as busy as the rest of the street.

One thing that hit me for the first time was that they always say Lilac Festival attendance is 100,000 people or so. The Stampede is 10 days, 1.2 million, so that's 120,000 per day on average -- weekends can get up to 150,000 and weekdays are 90,000 ish. But how much bigger physically are the Stampede grounds than just the width of 4th Street?

The 17th Ave mainstreet project took consideration of Lilac Fest; the construction barriers and fences were cleared out so that the 2nd to 5th stretch of 17th was fully open for the crowds. Good job, City.

But Transit was doing shuttle buses for the LRT. Would Transit do track construction and use busses on the Wednesday of a Stampede week?

Closing the broader community is an interesting idea, but the challenge is that if you close the whole community there's greater disruption (including for the #3 bus route), but without anything to draw people away from 4th St, it won't actually reduce the density of people on 4th. The sidewalks on 2nd this year were busy but not overcrowded. More space in the area won't do any good without something to bring people to use the space. And if you do spread out the vendors and tents and so on, then you are now moving it into residential areas and there will be greater pushback. (And things like shutting down car access to residential buildings.)

The actual solution IMO is to make it two days, either two consecutive Sundays or a Saturday and Sunday. It'll draw more people, sure, but 80,000 two days would be so much more manageable than 100,000 one day.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
The actual solution IMO is to make it two days, either two consecutive Sundays or a Saturday and Sunday. It'll draw more people, sure, but 80,000 two days would be so much more manageable than 100,000 one day.
Click to expand...
Good idea. Likely the city's own policies of charging organizers for event related costs would prevent scaling like this.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
I was at Lilac Festival and it was indeed bonkers. The extensions on 17th were quieter last year, but this year they were as busy as the rest of the street.

One thing that hit me for the first time was that they always say Lilac Festival attendance is 100,000 people or so. The Stampede is 10 days, 1.2 million, so that's 120,000 per day on average -- weekends can get up to 150,000 and weekdays are 90,000 ish. But how much bigger physically are the Stampede grounds than just the width of 4th Street?

The 17th Ave mainstreet project took consideration of Lilac Fest; the construction barriers and fences were cleared out so that the 2nd to 5th stretch of 17th was fully open for the crowds. Good job, City.

But Transit was doing shuttle buses for the LRT. Would Transit do track construction and use busses on the Wednesday of a Stampede week?
Click to expand...
There's a stampede-specific exemption built into many city operations, it seems.

So there's a "Stampede special" in place all over, better service doesn't always appear to be something that automatically triggers when an event is a certain scale. To your point, Lilac Fest as a single day is near in scale to some of the busier Stampede days, but is even more concentrated in activity. Yet it does still seem to be an ad-hoc incremental approach to accommodating that activity, instead of something like the Stampede approach that ensures better service and fewer disruptions to transit (among other examples).

That gets me thinking what about some of the other smaller festivals or just average summer weekend nightlife traffic - on a nice summer evening 17 Avenue must see tens of thousands of visitors on any given weekend; often there's many smaller profile events boosting numbers all over. I don't know if you could ever actually measure or know the number of people to any degree of accuracy, but I would be curious the difference between a "normal" summer weekend night v. a stampede summer weekend night in terms of foot traffic in the area, like 17th Avenue for example.

Does Stampede boost traffic above "normal" levels by 10%? 100%? 1000%? Would be interested to know.
ByeByeBaby said:
Closing the broader community is an interesting idea, but the challenge is that if you close the whole community there's greater disruption (including for the #3 bus route), but without anything to draw people away from 4th St, it won't actually reduce the density of people on 4th. The sidewalks on 2nd this year were busy but not overcrowded. More space in the area won't do any good without something to bring people to use the space. And if you do spread out the vendors and tents and so on, then you are now moving it into residential areas and there will be greater pushback. (And things like shutting down car access to residential buildings.)
Click to expand...
Fair points - the benefit would mostly go to the community to have fewer traffic jams idling in their neighbourhood all day. I do think there would be a way to keep the area open for transit, cycling and walking - create a neighbourhood party vibe above what is possible now. To decongest 4 Street, I like the idea to reduce the number of tents and maintain more open corridors so activity can bleed out into the other areas.
ByeByeBaby said:
The actual solution IMO is to make it two days, either two consecutive Sundays or a Saturday and Sunday. It'll draw more people, sure, but 80,000 two days would be so much more manageable than 100,000 one day.
Click to expand...
I like it - this totally makes sense. Perhaps that's the next incremental step when a festival is as full as Lilac is.
 
Count me in support of having it over a two day period instead of one. I used to go to the festival every year, but it got too busy for me. I like the crowds and vibrancy, but sometimes too much is too much. The extra vibrancy along 17th ave felt better than the festival itself IMO.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Count me in support of having it over a two day period instead of one. I used to go to the festival every year, but it got too busy for me. I like the crowds and vibrancy, but sometimes too much is too much. The extra vibrancy along 17th ave felt better than the festival itself IMO.
Click to expand...
Imagine if a few key people start putting the math together here and realize the value on having a "Lilac Festival" every weekend on 17th Avenue to boost the vibrancy you are talking about.

Close 17th Avenue to traffic from 2nd to 8th Street every Sunday all summer :cool:
 
christopherplace said:
It would require buy-in from the 17th Ave BIA first, they'd have to be the ones to lead the charge. From what I've heard, their staff hasn't been keen on the idea.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the BIA doesn't want a lot of change. A few years back they were looking into possibly renaming 17th ave to Notre Dame Ave, they decided against it feeling '17th' had more flair.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top