City of Spartanburg issued the following announcement on August 4.
Results show 55 percent of respondents support keeping Morgan Square closed to vehicle traffic
Recently the City concluded its online public survey asking respondents to share their perspectives regarding the expanded dining and pedestrian area at Morgan Square. In analyzing the raw data, City staff believes there are a number of informative themes revealed in the results, both in terms of who our survey participants were and in the perspectives they shared.
Of the survey's 3,444 respondents:
55.24% favor keeping W Main Street closed to vehicle traffic indefinitely for expanded pedestrian use.
24.28% favor keeping W Main Street closed to vehicle traffic in front of the square on weekends (Friday-Sunday) for expanded pedestrian use and open to vehicle traffic on weekdays (Monday-Thursday)
18.25% favor opening W Main Street in front of the square to vehicle traffic
Other key takeaways and points to remember:
• The survey was shared with the public primarily via the City’s Facebook page and the City website. The link was also shared by local media, partner organizations, and was widely shared by many downtown businesses and members of the public.
• This is not a scientific poll. Voluntary open surveys such as this have a bias towards engagement and motivation on the issue in question. These results are reflective of that dynamic. Understanding that, several of the survey’s questions were asked specifically with the intention of helping us understand who would be motivated to participate and share their perspectives.
• The survey’s respondents are overwhelmingly downtown regulars, with 66 percent saying they visit downtown at least once a week or are downtown workers/residents. Also, nearly 74 percent of respondents say they have used the expanded dining area, indicating that Morgan Square visitors specifically were especially motivated to take the survey.
• The survey shows outsized engagement among our younger audience. The highest number of participants by age, 25 percent of our respondents, are 25-34 and 47 percent are 25-44. That level of participation, particularly among the 25-34 group, is notable in that it is not reflective of our broader Facebook audience, which is somewhat older on average, and not typical when it comes to local government engagement overall in our experience.
• There is an unfortunate lack of racial diversity in the results. This is not reflective of the diversity of our social media and website audience overall, and we believe this lack of diversity is largely reflective of the challenges we know we have in achieving greater racial diversity overall downtown and reflects engagement with the issue.
• There was a notable and broad consistency among different demographic groups in their perspectives on the Morgan Square expanded dining area, with greater than 50 percent of nearly all demographic groups favoring continuing the expanded dining option full-time.
• The most substantive differences on the expanded dining area question were among respondents who visit downtown less frequently (once per month or less) and respondents age 65+. However, in both cases a plurality still favors keeping the street closed, with 41 percent and 45 percent respectively favoring that option.
Follow the link below for full results of the survey.
Original source can be found here.
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