Harbour Drive

[ScovaNotian]

There is an old map with the proposed Harbour Drive at http://halifax.ca/archives/documents/SS-10-15719ProposedHarbourDrive.pdf . It has a number of interesting features, such as ferry routes and the R.N.S Yacht Squadron where now the container terminal is.

[Aya_Akai]

South harbour bridge directly over georges island... I can dig that :haha: :haha:

Jeesh... I'm all for development and all..but holy crap this is just uneccesary haha, this plan is ridiculous.. I'm kind of glad it never happened.

[DigitalNinja]

One interesting thing to note, is the lack of the Mckay bridge.

That paper is old!

[spaustin]

Notice that what is essentially Harbour Drive got built in the North End and became just an extension of Barrington Street? In that drawing Barrington ended at where the Cogswell ended up. Good thing the southern end of it never happened.

[Keith P.]

The original version dates from 1957 or 58 and this version is dated 1963. Apparently the Bridge Commission either hadn't told anyone or hadn't started to plan the MacKay at that point.

Interesting to look at that plan and see all the other proposed artery improvements.Almost all of them are east-west: improvements to North, Chebucto, Sackville, and Bayers, with only one small section of Robie being changed. Apparently Harbour Drive was to handle the bulk of the north-south traffic.

I am not so quick to decry this as all bad. Essentially we have traded a touristy waterfront area that never really existed previously (look at all those working wharves; almost all those businesses are gone now) for multi-generational traffic problems. I love the idea of the loop from Spryfield across the Arm Bridge, downtown via Harbour drive and then off the peninsula or over to Dartmouth via the proposed Georges Island bridge, along with much needed improvements to east-west routes. Instead we sit on cartpath-like Water Street in traffic. I'm not sure we have gained much. The recently proposed 3rd bridge caused a huge outcry, and was far less ambitious than this. We seem to have lost the capacity for vision and dreaming.

[Jonovision]

We seem to have lost the capacity for vision and dreaming.

Do you truly believe that downtown highway building and road widenings are vision and dreaming?

Yes, our city would be different had it been built, but I very very much doubt it would be any better off. It would be just as clogged as any other road. You build capacity for cars, they fill it and your left with demand to keep building more capacity until you end up with a city like LA.

[Barrington south]

[QUOTE=Keith P.;4479196]
I am not so quick to decry this as all bad. (look at all those working wharves; almost all those businesses are gone now) I love the idea of the loop from Spryfield across the Arm Bridge, downtown via Harbor drive QUOTE]

:koko:

ummm hopefully the salter street block, along with queen's landing development (if it ever happens), will add to what bishop's landing has already brought....then the rest should be filled in
with top notch developments
would you be happy then?

the only thing that should be decried is the pace of the waterfront's progress
no offense Keith, but I'm glad your way of urban thinking, when it comes to automobiles is as bout as popular as female circumcision

[Waye Mason]

Plenty of successful functional cities have traffic problems. There is no solving traffic problems. There is only mitigation. We can reduce congestion caused by bad signaling, badly placed left hand turns that stop movement, etc, but even cities with the biggest highways (LA, for example) still have traffic jams.

I don't think having 4-8 lane boulevards driven into downtown is needful, like Leonard Preyra said about the 3rd bridge, once you get the cars into the south end, where do they go? It becomes an endless cycle of "improvements" to increase capacity, and for what? So people can live in suburbs farther and farther out?

There is no one in Halifax who can really complain about their commute compared to Toronto or Montreal. The only people who edge into 45 mins to 1.5 hr commutes live out past the end of the 107 or out at the edge of the county or beyond.

I would like to see existing roadbeds used better, there is plenty of capacity that is locked up on Agricola, Windsor... I would rather see the 1.5 billion for a new bridge put into transit and fixing existing roads and bridges to work better/be maintained adequately!

[Keith P.]

Do you truly believe that downtown highway building and road widenings are vision and dreaming?

Yes, our city would be different had it been built, but I very very much doubt it would be any better off. It would be just as clogged as any other road. You build capacity for cars, they fill it and your left with demand to keep building more capacity until you end up with a city like LA.

In its wildest dreams, Halifax would never be like LA. Get serious.

The fact of the matter is that Halifax has a traffic volume that has grown, but is relatively fixed within a range of values. If you built 8-lane expressways all over town they would not all suddenly fill up with cars drawn to them by some genetic instinct. The other factor is that Halifax's road network has not changed substantively since the time that drawing was made, while the traffic volume has grown every year. The result is the traffic mess we now have. I am less than sold on the idea that a Harbour Drive would be The End Of The World As We Know It for Halifax, and like to think about how the area would have developed differently if it had gone forward. I'm unconvinced it would be worse.