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...
The battle over on-street parking on Almon Street
The city is considering adding bike lanes and sharrows along Almon Street in hopes of creating an east-west safe corridor across the peninsula for active transportation. The proposal would see painted bike lanes along both sides of Almon between Agricola and Connolly Streets (about 1.2km) and painted sharrows for sections at either end of the...
The $390 million highway dodge
The idea that, after the past several years of fiscal belt-tightening, we should accept as reasonable the doubling of our planned highway investment is absurd.
After a few years of telling Nova Scotians what they can’t afford, the Liberal government appears to be breaking the bank to promise them exactly that. The province has announced an additional $390 million over seven years to twin 70 kilometres of 100 series highways and build a new four-lane divided expressway connecting Burnside and Bedford....
Yet again, the province sticks it to city planners
Last Thursday the Nova Scotia government announced the site of a new outpatient centre designed to replace some of the services currently offered at the Victoria General Hospital, which is slated for demolition by 2022. The new centre will be built in Bayers Lake, a retail business park known for inaccessible design and traffic congestion....
Why we need a great transportation plan
Last chance for the public to weigh in on the Integrated Mobility Plan
Just about a year ago HRM hired Rod McPhail to head up a team of Halifax city staffers from Transportation and Public Works, Halifax Transit, and Planning and Development to write Halifax’s first Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP), a 15-year transportation plan for the region. To those of you who shudder at the thought of yet...
Do transit pass incentive programs work?
In light of the demise of the federal transit pass tax credit, we take a look at how we incentivize transit use
The latest federal budget announced the end of the federal transit pass credit as of July this year. Since 2006, Canadians could reduce their tax bills by 15 per cent of the cost of their monthly transit pass purchases for the year. So, if you bought a year’s worth of Halifax Transit regular adult passes...
Should we build a Burnside expressway?
It’s been on the books for over 25 years now, and according to Derek Brett of the Greater Burnside Business Association, a new expressway connecting Burnside to Bedford/Sackville was supposed to break ground in February. But Nova Scotia’s recent tolling feasibility study appears to have bumped the new four-lane road down the priority list. The...
Halifax council may ask for 40 kph speed limit in residential areas
Halifax city council may be asking the province to lower speed limits on residential streets. Last week, council’s transportation committee approved a recommendation that would see Halifax request a change in the provincial Motor Vehicle Act (MVA) to reduce “prima facie” speed limits in residential areas down to 40 kph from the current 50 kph....
Gimme shelter
It's time to experiment with Halifax bus stops
The criminal and heartbreaking destruction of dozens of bus shelters in Halifax this month has got me thinking about bus stops, and not just in terms of their potential (or lack thereof) to withstand future attacks. Along with Halifax Transit’s route network redesign, a new Integrated Mobility Plan setting its sights on bus rapid transit,...
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