When the Toronto Raptors capped off their championship run earlier this year and I was possessed by a strange, powerful need to leave my house and be among people who also just witnessed this incredibly great basketball win, I had no doubt about where I would go.

I went to Yonge Street.

So did thousands of others. No one had to co-ordinate the celebration — everyone just seemed to automatically know it was the place to be. We blocked traffic and chanted long into the night. One of the city’s most iconic streets felt electric.

In the aftermath, I thought about how that night was one of the few times I remember Yonge Street actually living up to its iconic reputation. Most days, I actively avoid it. For a street so full of people — no street in Canada sees more daily pedestrian traffic than downtown Yonge Street — it feels hostile to pedestrians. It’s all narrow sidewalks and backed-up intersections.

This Thursday, the city will take a step toward changing that. As part of a processed dubbed YongeTOmorrow, people have been invited to come out to an event and give their feedback on a shortlist of three options for transforming the section of the street from Queen Street to College Street.

All the options take space away from cars. Yes, yes, I can hear the grumbling already. “War on the car” and all that. But this isn’t motivated by anti-car sentiment. This is motivated by math.

The numbers show that Yonge Street is simply unbalanced, with a design that does not match its daily use. At all intersections in the core area, pedestrians make up between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of all traffic, but get less than 25 per cent of the road space.

And projected population growth is only going to make the imbalance worse, unless the street changes. According to the city’s numbers, the stretch of Yonge near Yonge-Dundas Square — which today already sees more than 400,000 pedestrians each day — will need sidewalks more than 13 metres wide on both sides to comfortably accommodate levels of pedestrian traffic in 2031.

Yonge is only about 20 metres wide, so to accommodate sidewalks that large, something has to give.

In all three options being presented this week, that something is car lanes. Two of the options would see the road narrowed from four driving lanes to two. Option one maintains two-way driving access, while the second opts for a one-way configuration. Extra space goes to pedestrians.

Both improvements over the status quo, but the third option is the most intriguing. For much of the day, it would turn the entire street over to pedestrians. No cars and no trucks. Just people.

Yonge Street has been tried out as a pedestrian mall before, as a temporary initiative in 1970s.

The new proposal wouldn’t be a complete closure. Under the plan, some vehicles would still be allowed: delivery trucks, buses, cabs and ride-share vehicles. Expect an argument about exactly who should get access, and when. And just how much of downtown Yonge would get closed to cars remains a matter for debate. The report suggests a pedestrian zone from Gerrard Street to Dundas Street is the preferred option, but also presents a design for a more comprehensive zone stretching from Queen to Gerrard.

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I’d go with the bigger zone. This is not a place for compromised, watered-down planning. Giving pedestrians priority on Yonge isn’t just the right move based on math, it’s also an opportunity to make a statement. With so much of the city designed for cars — and deadly for other road users — prioritizing pedestrians on Yonge Street is exactly the kind of bold move that would show that planners and politicians at city hall are serious about road safety.

It’s overdue. It shouldn’t take an NBA title to make Yonge Street feel iconic. It should feel iconic every day.

Correction – Nov. 19, 2019: This column was edited from a previous version that incorrectly said the report suggested the preferred option for a pedestrian zone was from Queen Street to Dundas Street.