Open Streets
Welcome to Our Open Streets
Creating safer, healthier, and more connected communities.
What are Open Streets?
Open Streets is an event that creates a safe and welcoming space around the school gates for children, families and residents of the local street.
It encourages families to walk or ride to school and enjoy being active and healthy in a safer, less traffic-congested environment.
Open Streets transforms the streets around the school by limiting car traffic at drop-off and pick-up times one day per week for three consecutive weeks.
It reduces traffic congestion in the school area and creates calmer, quieter streets for residents, students and their families.
How does it work?
The City of Kingston in partnership with Chelsea Primary School, provides a safe, closed-off area around the school where students and families can meet before or after school to enjoy the space away from all the traffic congestion.
Why Open Streets?
Traffic congestion around schools during drop-off and pick-up times creates safety risks, poor air quality, and stressful environments for children, families, and residents.
This can discourage and limit our children's opportunities to enjoy being active, social and more connected to our community.
By encouraging walking, cycling and scooting, Open Streets tackles congestion, poor air quality, and road safety concerns. This makes school streets more appealing and convenient for active travel.
How Open Streets can help
Open Streets transforms the space around the school into vibrant spaces where children and families can walk, cycle, and scoot safely during key times of the day.
With less traffic, Open Streets helps create safer, healthier, happier and connected communities.
- Safety: Traffic is limited around the area, which reduces risks and creates a calm and welcoming environment.
- Health: Encourages more walking and riding, helping children and families build healthy habits.
- Community: Connects neighbours and creates shared spaces for everyone to enjoy.
- Environment: Reduces vehicle emissions and improves air quality.
Chelsea Primary School Trial Program
The City of Kingston worked in partnership with Chelsea Primary School to run the Open Streets trial program over three days in February 2025.
One street alongside Chelsea Primary School was closed off to local traffic. This allowed students and their families to have a space to enjoy a fun and safe environment at drop-off and pick-up times.
Council used signs and pop-up infrastructure to indicate that streets are open for children and families to walk and ride. During the temporary closure periods, traffic was be managed by Council marshals and the residents in the zone were still able to enter and exit their property as needed.
Consultation
Earlier in 2025 we ran a consultation asking for feedback about the future of the Open Streets Program.