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Originally Posted by Antigonish
I think we've come to the point where zoning needs to be mandated by the province. Japan does not have an affordability problem to the level we do, and it's partly due to their zoning laws (federal). If there is a provincial body set up to speed up the process of rezoning that circumvents a lot of municipal red tape and NIMBYism then it can only help.
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I wonder if this would really be better for Halifax. It may make sense in a big country with many metropolitan areas. But NS is basically rural outside of Halifax so urban concerns are pretty far down the overall provincial priorities. I think part of why Halifax has so many highways and so little transit is that the NS provincial government can build highways serving the whole province, while transit is largely Halifax-specific and so is a tougher sell.
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The other issue is transit. Halifax simply cannot grow much further without metro LRT. Are there anyone in-the-know about the LRT situation?
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People who live there will know more about the reality of construction on the ground but the BRT project looks pretty good and more ambitious than usual.
LRT I think is challenging for Halifax because it's hard to find a single route that serves a large portion of the metropolitan area. I don't think it's a coincidence that the BRT proposal started with a bunch of routes; I think you need a coherent system of many routes in Halifax to have a good system. Maybe one of these routes can be upgraded over time. I could see this happening faster than what currently looks feasible if growth keeps up. I could also see some underground portions of the transit network being attractive. I think Cogswell might be a bit of a missed opportunity if no thought is given to future tunnels.