Two weeks into the King St. transit pilot, some businesses on the main Entertainment District artery say they are starting to feel a strain from the lack of private vehicle traffic on the road between Bathurst and Jarvis. “The whole neighbourhood has suffocated,” said Laleh Larijani of the bakery Forno Cultura. “We can have transit solutions that don’t impact businesses so much.”The one-year pilot, which began November 12, aims to ease travel for streetcar riders on the city’s most congested route by restricting through-traffic of private vehicles. Taxis are allowed to travel through intersections between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., but ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft are not. Larijani said her business has had between 50-100 fewer customers each day since the beginning of the pilot, with a drop in sales of about 20 per cent. “The truth is that at this rate our business that has been growing with be out of business within a year,” she said.With enforcement of the pilot rules by Toronto police in place, some transit users are noting a smoother commute via the King streetcar. Larijani and some fellow business owners said this improvement to transit has come at the cost of threatening their operations — and the vibrancy of King St. in turn. “Our sales dropped when it comes to Uber (Eats) and the delivery services,” said Dan Gunam, owner of the restaurant Calii Love at King and Blue Jays Way. “The majority of restaurants on King West, they suffer,” he said. In the meantime though, especially as the weather cools, Gunam fears business will slow as fewer people will be able to drive directly on King and park there. “Toronto is driven on the weekends by people coming in from outside the city,” he said. “If they can’t find parking it becomes a headache.”Gunam said he thinks businesses would have had an easier time with the pilot had it been introduced in the summ ...
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