Bree Street Experiment

Testing a street in real time

The Bree Street Experiment pilots what a more people-friendly inner city could feel like, on the block of Bree Street between Wale and Shortmarket. Aligned with the City's CBD Mobility and Accessibility Plan, it reduces traffic to one lane in each direction, introduces planters and seating, improves pedestrian safety and creates shared space for cars, cyclists and people on foot. It is run with Young Urbanists, and it is deliberately reversible: the point is to test the changes in real time and let what happens inform what the street becomes.

More than 60 new planters went in, turning a grey corridor into something closer to a living green commons, cared for through the Green Squad alongside the City's Parks team. Shade was the thing people asked for most often on a summer Sunday, and the planters carry young trees planted to answer it as they establish.

It began with Sundays

Before anything was built, the street was simply closed. From November 2024 the block from Wale to Strand, including Shortmarket, was given over to people on successive Sundays from 9am to 5pm. They are called experiments rather than events because a closure of this kind does not require an event licence from the City, which is what made it possible to try the idea at all.

Pedestrians were counted hourly across Bree and Shortmarket from November 2024 to April 2025. A car-free Sunday averaged 5 792 people. A Monday averaged about 1 570, and Tuesday to Friday sat between 1 450 and 1 600. Even Saturday, a weekend day, came in lower at roughly 4 300. Sunday was not busy because it was the weekend; it was busy because the street had been handed over.

Of 61 people surveyed, more than 70% rated the experience excellent or good, and 57 said Bree and Shortmarket should stay car-free on Sundays after March 2025. Asked what they enjoyed most, 56 of 62 named the car-free environment itself and 40 named the community interaction. What people actually did was walk, skate and cycle, and eat and drink. One quiet activation, a Silent Book Club, drew 137 people counted reading in the street.

Every business surveyed reported more foot traffic, and several reported an average 20% increase in total sales on car-free Sundays.

What the absence proved

The sharpest finding came after the Sundays stopped. One business reported a noticeable decline in regular Sunday income, describing the closure as having become a consistent and reliable revenue stream, not only for them but especially for their vendors. The clearest evidence of what the street was doing turned out to be its absence.

Survey figures come from the project's monitoring and evaluation framework: 61 to 62 respondents on user perception, a smaller set of Bree Street businesses on trade, and hourly pedestrian counts from November 2024 to April 2025.