Comment Details

The corridor between Shrewsbury Street and Town Hall (including Washington Square and Union Station) is not a particularly pedestrian friendly environment for commuters travelling to and from the train station and destinations downtown (mainly due to crossing Foster Street). Noting that, I think food trucks could be a huge draw for visitors from outside the city; this presents a unique challenge in that the drafters of any regulation should be cognizant of the growing effort to focus on so-called "complete streets" that are accessible to all users, regardless of mode of transportation. The Worcester Common, City Hall, and Union Station area were historically and continue to be major hubs of activity, and land uses in these areas should continue to take that into consideration - including the use of food trucks.

Note that I don't endorse any effort to limit food trucks to specific areas or specific times (this is one of the main benefits to an operator of a mobile operation), but would like to present the operators an incentive to establish a presence in developed pedestrian-friendly neighborhood areas; it would seem that the operator would naturally go where pedestrians exist in high numbers already, but the establishment of incentives can be used as a means to bring more pedestrians and energy to other areas as well.

Maybe this means a "setback" limiting food trucks from operating within a certain number of feet of parking lots over a certain size, ensuring that people need to get out and walk around the city. (This is a "spitball" idea; I'm sure there's some absurd negative externality I haven't considered while writing this.)