An urgent motion at Vancouver city council will seek an emergency $30,000 loan to keep the engine running for Car Free Day this year.

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On Monday, organizers had announced that Vancouver’s Car Free Day events on Main Street, Commercial Drive and Denman Street were cancelled.

Just a day later, Couns. Lucy Maloney and Sean Orr announced plans for an urgent motion that could potentially save the event.

“Car Free Day is one of the highlights of the Vancouver summer. It’s heartbreaking that it could be cancelled. The good news is, it doesn’t have to be,” said Maloney in a statement.

In a note shared on its website and social media accounts Monday, organizers had said that “after careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision not to proceed with Vancouver Car Free Days in 2026.”

This year’s Main Street event was slated to take place Sept. 13, while Commercial Drive would have been a week earlier on Sept. 5. The event on Denman Street was cancelled in 2024 and didn’t return in 2025.

Before COVID-19, Car Free Days typically occurred earlier in the summer.

“We know how much these events mean to the vendors, artists, musicians, local businesses and community members who show up year after year,” the note continues. “Car Free Day has always been about celebrating neighbourhood culture, creativity and connection — and it is incredibly hard to pause something that brings so many people together.”

The group went on to say that “the landscape for large-scale events, particularly community events, has been changing,” and cited rising costs and changes to funding as being the main reasons impeding this year’s events.

“So we’re going to take this year to take stock, talk with progressive politicians, reach out to aligned organizations and the community, and see how this might transform,” organizers said.

Neil Wyles is executive director of the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Association. He said the news came as a shock, as his BIA hadn’t received any indication that the event was at financial risk.

“It’s a bit of a gut shot. We had no forewarning of this,” he said. “I think if they were in financial straits, we would have hoped that as sort of their — no pun intended — main supporter here, they would have reached out.”

Wyles said his organization would be “working the phones and all of their connections very hard to try and see that something happens on this day,” particularly as the event represents a massive chunk of income for Main Street businesses.

“It’s very early in the year. It’s not like it’s a week before, but we want to make sure that we do right by our members,” he said. “It’s a lot of money, it’s millions of dollars on a one-day event that people spend in our neighbourhood.”

Response to the announcement on Instagram was one of both concern and support from local residents, performers from previous years’ events and longtime vendors.

“Very concerning. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this,” commented Orr, just a day before announcing the urgent motion.

Orr and Maloney’s joint statement noted that the events were cancelled “due to a budget shortfall of just $30,000.”

The motion, which goes before council on March 10, proposes $30,000 of bridging funding be supplied to the Car Free Society by mid-April to ensure planning can resume in time for this year’s original event dates.

“The amount would cover the city’s own charges for expenses such as policing, access to water mains and street cleaning,” the statement noted.

Orr and Maloney also pointed out that city council had already approved $2 million for a night of fireworks, following the cancellation of this year’s Celebration of Light due to funding shortages.

Elsewhere on the announcement post, Vancouver-based band Sleep Gonzales commented that playing the Commercial Drive event two years in a row “was one of the highlights” for the band.

“Still think about how awesome the green electric generators were because they made next-to-no noise. Whereas gas powered generators all sound like lawn mowers,” the band’s account commented.