Some of HRM’s richest neighbourhoods are being subsidized by some of our poorest ones, according to a new analysis by urban planners Tristan Cleveland and Paul Dec which looks at census data, road costs, and road length per capita. The analysis brings to light systemic inequities, and also shows that on average, Halifax has been...
Policing and 6-foot fences: Five years in, city and province still make Open Streets too costly
“When you look at any city from the air, the biggest public space is the streets. And the streets belong to everybody.” That’s Gil Penalosa, formers parks commissioner of Bogota, Columbia, where he helped pioneer Ciclovia, a weekly event that sees 121 kilometres of city streets closed every Sunday morning to vehicle traffic, and opened...
Building the Blue Route
Nova Scotia is constructing a 3,000 km bike route network, albeit very slowly
Last fall over 800 people showed up on Nova Scotia’s French Shore to ride the Gran Fondo Baie Sainte-Marie, a mass-start 35- to 120-kilometre-long bike tour along coastal and country roads between Yarmouth and Weymouth. This September, even more are expected to register for the event, now in its third year. On the south shore,...
Turning the corner on street design
Halifax has over 100 channelized right turns, and only a few may be actually warranted
Because it’s en route to my kid’s school, I cross the intersection at North and Gottingen Streets roughly four times a day, and it is hands-down the most stressful 75 metres of the kilometre-long commute. I hadn’t really considered why that was until a transportation planner from Toronto named it for me: channelized right turns....
The future of cycling in Halifax may be bright, assuming we get around to it
Last week Halifax’s active transportation team presented their vision for the future of cycling in Halifax to a packed room at the Central Library. There was not much new in the presentation, more a summation of the latest in bike planning soon to be released as part of the Integrated Mobility Plan, which goes to...
Blue Urbanism project shines a light on our harbour trash problem
On our current trajectory, by 2050 the amount of plastic in the ocean will match the amount of fish, by weight.
Last Sunday volunteers scoured the beaches of McNab’s Island in Halifax Harbour and filled 500 garbages bags with random bits of garbage from the shoreline. The Friends of McNabs Island Society has been organizing this cleanup since 1991, and president Cathy McCarthy estimates they have collected nearly 13,000 bags of garbage over the years from...
Too good for second opinions? Halifax Transit refuses expert help
This is clearly a transit agency that is hostile to the idea of outside help, and its "baffling" report to city council is a clear red flag for problematic leadership from transit head Dave Reage.
Halifax Transit’s latest report to council’s Transportation Standing Committee can be summed up in a word: No. Six months ago Halifax Regional Council unanimously requested a report on hiring a consultant to review the corridor routes of Halifax Transit’s Moving Forward Together (MFT) plan. You may remember reading about it here. On Wednesday, June 7,...
Making highways safer without twinning
With the newly re-elected Liberals promising to twin 70 more kilometres of 100 series highways despite the enormous financial costs and the ensuing increase in number of vehicles on our highways (which is proportional to increased numbers of injuries and deaths), it seems worthwhile talking about what else we might be doing to improve safety on our...
Marc Garneau comes to Halifax to remind us that he’s not doing anything for passenger rail
While provincial party leaders made their election pitches to Halifax Regional Council, federal transportation minister Marc Garneau was in town today telling Halifax Chamber of Commerce members (paying about $55 a head) all about his new Transportation Modernization Act (Bill C-49). The bill begins the implementation phase of Garneau’s Transportation 2030 plan, which I wrote about...
Flagging the data
I both love and hate crosswalk flags. I love that they are a cheap, simple, grassroots answer to a classic problem facing pedestrians: drivers who just won’t yield. But I hate that they are essentially one more way to shift responsibility for the behaviour of said drivers onto pedestrians.
You may have noticed the increasing presence of buckets of bright orange flags placed on either end of crosswalks throughout Halifax. Since council passed its Pedestrian Safety Action Plan in 2014, community members have been allowed to set up crosswalk flags “with input from HRM staff to help ensure programs are carried out appropriately and...
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