Sundays Downtown

The city’s buses now run on Sundays, which is a great boon for the thousands of Waterbury residents who either can’t afford a car or are unable to drive. It is also a boon for downtown. Downtown Waterbury used to be deserted on Sundays. Even on a beautiful summer day, there were no pedestrians and virtually no cars. Downtown was a ghost town. Now that the buses run on Sundays, there are pedestrians and, for some reason, a fair amount of traffic. It’s not as busy as it is during the week, probably because the few stores are all closed, but it no longer looks like the city center has been abandoned.

As I wrote earlier, there are some people who think that having 125 poor people visit a health clinic on Bank Street every day will harm efforts to improve downtown. The reality is that those 125 people will make Bank Street look busier and more successful, just as the people waiting for buses downtown on Sundays make East Main Street and the Green look lively.