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...
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...
There goes the neighbourhood: Queen’s Marque construction is hitting nearby businesses hard
Recognizing the problem, Waterfront Development is spending big money to help out the Murphy's businesses, and the city is being asked to pitch in with even more financial help. Meanwhile, however, the crown corporation is ignoring the plight of a business right across the street from the construction zone.
The proliferation of bulldozers, cranes, and work crews punching new towers into the Halifax skyline has also raised a controversial question at ground level: should businesses whose sales are hurt by the construction receive compensation from the developer and/or the public purse? The question gets even stickier when government is an investor — as it is...
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...
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