News 1. Marine Protected Area The Department of Fisheries and Oceans yesterday officially designated the St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area: Located east of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, this Marine Protected Area helps conserve and protect many ecologically and biologically significant features, including important habitats, areas of high biodiversity and biological productivity, and endangered and threatened […]
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...
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 […]
Bringing bus lanes to Bayers Road
Transit corridor options study will analyze impacts on all modes of travel, a first for HRM
The city has set in motion an ambitious timeline to study and come up with functional design options for 2.5 to 6.5km of “transit priority corridors” on Halifax streets. That’s good news for transit riders, and ultimately for anyone who is getting stuck in vehicle traffic on the peninsula. In a request for proposals released […]
Boston just lowered speed limits; Halifax should too
HRM's new transportation plan should be starting the conversation on speed limits.
Another major city has lowered urban speed limits in an effort to make its streets safer. As of Monday, Boston’s default speed limit dropped from 30 miles per hour to 25, about the same as going from 50 km/h down to 40. The move is part of Boston Mayor Martin Walsh’s Vision Zero commitment. Vision Zero...
Streets are for everyone
The old car-centric focus of our streets is slowly making way to a new view that considers pedestrians.
When the intersection just to the west of the Hydrostone Market block came up on the road resurfacing schedule a couple years ago, instead of just the typical “shave and pave” from the city, the absurdly wide crossing got an upgrade of a different sort. Thanks to a backlog of complaints on file, the city...
Rethink: Halifax council calls for a much-needed second opinion on our bus route network
Colour me impressed. Halifax city councillors have voted to get a second opinion on the city’s new bus route plan, Moving Forward Together. Though it’s already been approved and the five-year implementation plan is underway, most of the heavy changes aren’t scheduled until 2018 and beyond, so there’s time to rework it. (In fact, the...
New transportation plan sets clear priority for transit, but missing key value statements
Last week we got our first glimpse of what a new 15-year transportation plan could look like for Halifax. In a second round of public consultations (ongoing this week in Bedford, Spryfield, and online), the Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) team has presented a bunch of proposed actions, ranging from plugging the gaps in our sidewalk...
If you don’t pay attention, the future of HRM transportation will be decided without your input
Halifax's new 15-year transportation plan could change the priorities on our streets
People are rightly up in arms about the recent poor turnout for our municipal election, but let me throw another log on the fire of concern over citizen apathy: The first round of consultations for the Integrated Mobility Plan have come and gone, and a whopping 300 of us participated. Actually, it’s probably worse than...
It’s not too late for Halifax to hit mobility targets
First round of consultations starting for Halifax's new mobility plan
The first of three rounds of public consultation start this week for city’s new Integrated Mobility Plan. I spoke with IMP project manager Rod McPhail about what the consultations will be like, and why we should bother showing up. First, a quick refresher on the IMP: Staff started working on this plan back in February […]