I'm of the opinion that facilitating ease of travel by personal vehicle and providing parking for commuters from separate, suburban municipalities should be our last concern for the Downtown.
People will only choose public transit when it is the easiest option and I believe we should follow the lead of cities that have proven this is exceptionally effective as a component of urban planning, like Vancouver has done, and Calgary is starting to do.
My solution for the traffic congestion and parking problems in the Downtown is a combination of all sorts of ideas we've discussed here over the years.
I break them up into two categories, Must-Have Minimums and Nice-to-Have Add-ons.
Must-Have Minimums
Build a large new parking garage near the Downtown West End, preferably on currently industrial land associated with the Port along Water Street West.
Reintroduce the trams along their original route, which would connect this parking garage to the Downtown.
Make monthly parking passes at this parking garage more affordable than any other parking garage in the city.
Decree that having a parking pass from this parking garage enables the holder to use public transit (at least, the trams) for free.
This alone could work wonders... but we could do much more:
Nice-to-Have Add-ons
This new parking garage should be constructed to replace the Atlantic Place parking garage, which would be demolished and the site used for new commercial development.
Water and Duckworth streets should be turned into one-way streets.
Water Street, from Becks Cove to Ayre's Cove, should be pedestrian/tram-only as it was for a time in the 1960s:
The Telegram
The existing road network makes that a perfectly easy switch to do.
Pipe Dreams
And, if we could afford it and really wanted to plan ahead...
Instead of building that new parking garage in the Downtown West End, build it in Donovan's Industrial Park in Mount Pearl. Build a Light Rail Transit line from there along the old rail bed through the Waterford Valley to the Downtown West End, where a small station can link it to the trams.
This would not only make commuting less expensive than using a personal vehicle, it would also make it faster and more convenient.
And, really, our traffic congestion and parking problem downtown is primarily an issue with commuters from the southwest, from Mount Pearl, Paradise, Conception Bay South, etc. If we take care of that route, we fix the problem. There are far fewer commuters coming downtown from St. John's proper or suburbs to the northeast such as Torbay.