The pilot project going on this month to keep the late-night weekend bar scene under control now that University of Guelph students are back holds a lot of promise, judging by this past weekend. Even with the number of people in the downtown late at night swollen beyond its usual large size by fans of the Guelph Jazz Festival and its all-night Nuit Blanche on Saturday night, police say they laid relatively few charges.
The pilot project devised by the Downtown Nightlife Task Force, which includes Guelph Police, includes the return of taxi stands as well as portable toilets set out on weekend nights in the Macdonell Street Parking Lot. But most noticeably, it includes the blocking off of parts of Macdonell and Wyndham streets to traffic from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
It must have been alarming to the owners of the many cars seen to be towed away from the closed-off street sections after 11 p.m. But some of the sting would have been removed when the owners found there were no charges or tickets involved, just a relocation of their cars to another location downtown. Some of the cars seen being towed Saturday night were right in spots designated as being for taxis only. The return of taxi stands – with the addition this time of security officers paid for by the Guelph Downtown Business Association – hasn’t so far stopped people from hailing taxis elsewhere in the downtown. But it seems to be adding a desirable degree of order to the task of matching riders with cabs.
The downtown was mostly cleared out this weekend by around 3:15 a.m. each night, which is a little bit ahead of the task force’s 4 a.m. estimate, according to Guelph Police Chief Bryan Larkin, who notes that “everything’s on track.” So far, he said Monday, “the feedback has been very positive about how we’re managing people.”
Last year, the biggest problems associated with the return of U of G students came on Homecoming weekend, which this year is the weekend after next. That could be the true test of the new pilot project, although a lot of the Homecoming weekend problems tend to arise at private parties in off-campus housing.
While the jury is still out on the pilot project, though, it seems the view at this point is “So far, so good.”