Spring Garden Streetscape
 

Well, HRM's planners have gone off the rails again. Take a look at what they propose for SGR:

• Video Link

The chaises are where I lost it. But there is just so much more. Is it a street, or a park?

EDIT: For reasons I cannot decipher, the embedded link fails. But if you paste it into your browser it works fine, go figure. https://youtu.be/SbquokBUYLY

The video link is broken. Is it this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbquokBUYLY

The chaises look a bit odd to me in that they will be very close to the street and there will still be loud diesel buses and trucks close by. Maybe they should have added a representative audio track of diesel engines and panhandlers. :)

I think the idea of giving more space over to pedestrians is a perfectly reasonable trade-off. This street gets a lot of pedestrian traffic and can't carry much car traffic. In particular there is not enough space for people to walk by when there are a lot of people waiting for the buses, or at least this is how it used to be. Streamlining the roadway down to a lane in each direction means cars can still get through but you eliminate a lot of the weaving and drop off stuff that slows traffic down. Cars can still go down Spring Garden Road and turn off a side street or come up from a side street.

Both links (your and mine) go to the same video but the embed function for Youtube here in the forum will not process them. Strange.

I think giving more space for pedestrians is perfectly reasonable. It is many of the other things that are very questionable. Aside from the chaises, the tables and chairs are silly, the pergolas useless, and every time a bus stops or a cab drops off/picks up a fare, traffic grinds to a halt. And forget about deliveries or service vehicles. Choking all of the side street access points down to one lane seems a bit absurd as well. And where will the precious cyclists ride? You cannot give them 3 meters clearance in this configuration. Perhaps they go on the sidewalk?

It all seems very half-baked, which is what I suspect the designers were when they came up with this.

For the youtube tag it takes just the alphanumeric code at the end of the URL, the "SbquokBUYLY" part. The instructions are buried at the bottom of the "BBCode guide".

One thing I wasn't clear on is if the tables and chairs would be added by the city or if that just represents additional sidewalk space that can be allocated to businesses.

Maybe the chaises are for the panhandlers. :)

Ah, I had forgotten about that. Seems an odd way to do it.

The link worked for me. :shrug:

I like the increased space for pedestrians, but had the same questions:
- Bus stops will slow down traffic as there is no longer a viable way to pass them.
- Deliveries? Sounds like a mess.
- Cyclists? No provisions unless they plan to make adjacent streets cycle-priority (or whatever they call it). There are bike racks so of course they are expecting cyclists.
- Pergola bus stops are great in sunny weather, but what about the other 300 days a year when there is some form of precipitation falling? Shouldn't they be sheltered?
- The walk-through section of the video reminded me of a cyclists view as they are weaving around unsuspecting pedestrians on the sidewalk - maybe that is their plan for bicycles?

Overall I actually like the idea, but either somebody hasn't thought through the details, or they just don't care what happens on the street as long as it looks nice.

They will likely use them.

The bus pergolas make no sense, but maybe they are trying to show a design that incorporates both a transparent roof and a solar screen, which is a useful combination.

No change rooms so I will have to wear my Speedo under my clothes when I head out to sun bath on the chaises

I could see that. Shouldn't jump to conclusions using only a CGI video.

LOL

:haha:

Hasn't the "stoplet" that has been there for over a year already made it so traffic behind buses stops when the buses do?

It disappeared for the winter but I assume it has returned now. But, yes, it ties up traffic terribly. And looks horrible of course.

Morris is going to be the cycling priority street that connects Lower Water, Hollis, and South Park. I think the decision was made early in the SGR process that, given the limited amount of space, pedestrians and buses were going to come first.

I don't think that you can blame the traffic issues on Spring Garden Road to the stoplet which I am indifferent about.

There is huge issue with parked cars on the northern side of Spring Garden road. Ultimately, Spring Garden is really a walking street which makes sense for the new re-do.

Stores along the street have generally done really well from foot traffic and the going rent for ground floor commercial space is an indicator. I recall hearing that it is near the most expensive in the city, maybe the province. Park Lane is the exception. They tried to take advantage of the location on Spring Garden road, but soon learned that most people tended to window shop on their walk downtown. Then buy later. Or just having a store on the street is good marketing in the long run.

And that circles back to traffic. Do you really think that you can get this same business activity from cars stuck in traffic? Most shoppers arriving by car, stay clear of SPR and park on the side streets or in underground parking, which will become more plentiful as new development occurs in the area.

If parking on the north side is an issue then it is quite easy to resolve, just remove it.

Park Lane was a mistake from the day it was conceived. It began as a high-end mall that overestimated the ability of Haligonans in the late '80s/early '90s to be willing to pay for luxury goods. Then the traditional resistance of citizens to use parkades in malls (see also Scotia Square) and the death of the mall generally overtook it and it has remained in the doldrums ever since.

Most shoppers do not arrive by car unless they are in cabs. All on-street parking on SGR could disappear tomorrow and not many businesses would be affected. What does affect them is an inability to have delivery trucks and service vehicles access their premises, or have people dropped off or picked up. This plan will eliminate that. We see the idiocy along Argyle St now in the part that has been reduced to a single lane with little provision for pullover or accommodation for delivery vehicles. HRM (read: Mason) recently had additional benches installed to prevent this from happening. The heavy hand of planning dogma does not translate well into the real world of business.

From the 'Shape Your City' site, a little context on the areas of SGR - in particular what to expect from the side streets. Looks like lots of room for loading in this and any parking being relegated to underground.

https://i.imgur.com/yGmMgh1.png

Full doc
https://www.shapeyourcityhalifax.ca/...ocuments/14662

As for cycling, Morris/University is slated to be the the main East-West corridor. Traffic on SGR right now is slow enough between buses, cars, and crosswalks that I generally feel safe in mixed traffic.

Easy for a city planner to say regarding loading. Try moving a heavy pallet of goods down those sidewalks. Assuming you could even get your truck onto one of those side streets in the first place. This is shaping up to be another HRM planning disaster.

...over snowbanks, icy sidewalks, slush/snow covered sidewalks

The side streets probably will be tighter, but some are getting rearranged to be one way so...we'll see I guess. I don't see the trucks, as they are, navigating those bump out curbs extremely well though. As for moving goods, it might actually be less of a pain with more sidewalk space.

you make it sound as if there are currently loading docks along the street front.

Considering the newer developments on the street on both sides,...which stores are actually serviced directly from Spring Garden Road? most appear to have loading docks on the side streets. And anything delivered to a store that is serviced from SPR would have to be delivered by hand any way.

There are. They are called parking spaces, loading zones or taxi stands, none of which appear in this new proposal.

It is rather different moving a pallet across a sidewalk versus moving one along a sidewalk full of pedestrians for a full block.

The tender was released today for this project. It closes on March 30th. Add in time to evaluate and approve a bid means construction should begin sometime in May/June.

Shame this took so long. The pandemic would have been a perfect time for this to be done.

The pandemic is/was a big fail for public works in Canada. Last summer was the perfect time to do outdoor projects. The economy was soft, traffic was low, and the covid risk was low to nonexistent. The failure to take advantage of the situation is not unique to Halifax.

Cities really need to have a diverse range of projects that are "shovel ready" at any time.

Another street wrecked. Hope some of the businesses can survive, but this in summer 2021 combined with COVID 2020 is a double whammy.

I think this one was banking on a slower vaccine roll-out and a summer more similar to last. With the accelerated roll-out, I think that calculus has changed. Still, better to have it done now than next year when things are much more likely to be back to pre-pandemic levels.

Meh... I don't see the timing as much of a big deal. Construction is inconvenient, and will always be.

We can't base construction schedules on the timing of a pandemic. It has to follow the normal procedures, and people will adjust to the inconvenience as they always do. We are an adaptable species.

It's being reported that three bids to undertake the Spring Garden Road revitalization have come in well over budget. Brycon Construction put in the lowest bid at $11.2 million, $800,000 over budget. Other bids, from Dexter and Ocean, were even higher.

Despite the sticker shock, Sue Uteck of the SGR Business Association says she hopes the work will go ahead this summer. Councillor Mason agrees, saying, "Now really is the time to do this work, not once economic recovery has really started next summer."

With material prices and labor availability continuing to change so rapidly I don't think we should be at all surprised by this.

With things so fluid right now and for the foreseeable future, I'm not certain whether HRM should just bite the bullet and go ahead anyway, but there's certainly an argument that that would be the right thing to do.

I think with things still being more locked down now than they would be next summer, it’s still the right time. I’m sure businesses would prefer to serve next years tourists with a new streetscape vs. a construction site.

Though the Mills building project, and Clyde Street projects have combined to make walking in the area an absolute pain.

I tend to agree. My comment was actually more a consideration of the extra cost - do we eat it now or later? I think I vote now. It'll certainly never get cheaper and it's virtually inevitable that the work will be done at some point no matter what.

The project has been bandied about for a decade. Time to spit or get off the lot. Wait - that's not quite how that saying goes, is it?

The "sticker shock" reporting often feels pretty arbitrary. What if $13M had been the chosen value and the bidders came under? Or maybe they bid $X + some number they think the city will accept. Then of course there are the cost overruns after the contract is awarded. Does awarding a higher contract value up front tend to reduce overruns? I don't know.

We are in a period when the government is more or less printing money and we're seeing inflation in some areas (e.g. construction materials) even though the CPI is not very high. These cost increases are not really surprising. But life goes on and cities still need to maintain their infrastructure. That ties in with another somewhat odd aspect of this, how infrastructure renewal downtown is often presented as a special extra. The sidewalks and layout of SGR do not seem to reflect the present needs of the street and a lot of the physical infrastructure is quite old and tired.

All good points, and all lead me to the same conclusion - do it now.

However, it's not arbitrary. When contracts are created to be put out for tender, cost estimates are calculated beforehand. In this case the estimates were probably calculated before pandemic cost increases came into effect, and thus the "sticker shock" when contractors came back with pricing based on current costs.

Cost overruns only occur if a problem arises that wasn't foreseen and thus covered in the contract. Therefore, a higher cost up front wouldn't result in cost savings from overruns. It might result in a better quality job with a longer lifespan and less repairs/maintenance in the future, but that's a separate issue.


I agree. It should be done now as the costs are not going to decrease anytime soon. Budget could be taken from something of lower priority, like that silly flyover ramp off the Macdonald, for example.

Looks like it is moving ahead:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...mber-1.6052457

Sure, but to get at my point imagine 2 scenarios.

1) The price of project inputs goes up in 2019. HRM staff estimate in 2020 that it will cost $20M. The winning bid accepted by HRM council is $19M.

2) HRM staff estimate in 2020 that it will cost $18M. The price of project inputs goes up in 2021. The winning bid accepted by HRM council is $19M.

Scenario (2) is a "cost overrun" scenario with attendant news articles. Scenario (1) is the opposite, maybe with some good news articles. Both result in the same expenditure. Ultimately the core questions are what the city spends and what the value of the service is. Maybe we can say something about the accuracy of projected costs too but I doubt that HRM staff can accurately predict events like the pandemic.

Note the overall background here is growth, inflation, and HRM delays for one reason or another. So gradual escalation in costs is going to be the norm.

Someone should take an inventory of businesses on SGR that are currently operating (no doubt many on life support already due to the lockdown) and then do a comparison in a year's time when this is done and the street is made hostile to visitors from outside the immediate neighborhood. We could well see SGR turned into a much larger and more tragic Granville Mall wasteland.

There is already an inventory of sorts, done passively by Google Maps streetside shots.

It will be interesting to see the difference once it's all finished and has been operating as such for a couple of years. Somehow I don't think the words "hostile" and "tragic" will be the descriptors that people will be using, though. ;)

Perhaps "foolhardy" will be a better descriptor for HRM's Planning unit sandboxing various textbook theories their heads were filled with in planning school using actual private businesses as victims guinea pigs to determine whether the theories are valid.

There's a good amount of natural churn going on already on SGR with a coupe longer-term players. I don't see as much waxing about levelling a block of the street for development, and the challenges that imposes, as I do the redevelopment of the street itself.

Granville Mall fails because it fails to go anywhere. It's a little cobblestone park on the edge of Cogswell, where nobody walks from.

SGR is a pedestrian-focused retail street and transit throughway, and while the changes in this project will disrupt both, as a result will ultimately better serve those users for years to come.

Yes, because that clearly happened to Argyle St, despite you repeatedly warning us of the future ghost town :haha:

Retail is fleeing and it is strictly a street for boozers and party types. Seems an odd thing for HRM the Good to be promoting with tax dollars.

Retail is fleeing? Are you referring to Biscuit, the single retail shop on a street dominated by restaurants and bars? Every other business (pre-pandemic) was flourishing, and I'm happy my tax dollars go towards these projects.

You've already stated on multiple occasions that you don't visit downtown often. For those of us who do: it's a vibrant street with a great energy, and I'm certainly not a "boozer or party type". I hope the Spring Garden project goes well and can match the success of Argyle. :cheers:

Argyle is great - it’s nice to have a city that actually has a nightlife - there’s a bit of retail but it’s been by and large a food and drink street. I live a few blocks from SGR and am there every other day in more open times, and have no doubt the area will be fine.

On another note: was listening to the piece on CBC this morning and I think the archaeological aspect of this project is going to be really exciting. We’re digging deep down under one of the oldest streets in the city — I’m wondering what we’ll run into in terms of surprises.

That's true. Mainly because none of my social circle go DT now either. Since we do not work DT there is no longer any reason to go there, especially given how difficult HRM has made it for those who do not live close by to do so. So now when we get together we go to places in areas that welcome us and our vehicles, since we live all over the place and need to drive. Buses are impractical and nobody would be caught dead on a bicycle of course.

Delays in the project timeline, most likely.

That sounds most interesting!