[beyeas]

I am somewhere in the middle on this argument. I do agree that there is WAY to much focus on car travel in this city, but equally there are some incredibly poorly designed roadways that reflect poorly on the city's overall feel & experience.

I think that at the end of the day my biggest beef is the piece-meal approach to all this by the city. We have one group at city hall scraping away at slight improvements to public transit. Another group at city hall working on slight improvements to bike transportation. Another group at the bridge commission focussing on new bridge/tunnel. Another group at the province working on slightly improved 100 series highways. And another group at city hall working on slight improvements to city roads.

What NEEDS to happen is for there to one single body responsible for the big picture... i.e. a Halifax Region Transportation Committee with real power and teeth. There NEEDS to be a plan that is integrated, thought out as a whole, and part of a overall picture.

Sometimes the answer is new/bigger roads, sometimes the answer is higher/lower tolls, sometimes the answer is better public transit etc etc etc. There is no one answer. But the problem with the existing system is that road engineers want to build new roads, bridge commissions want to build new bridges, and public transit designers want more buses etc. I would feel better about the decisions that get made if I new they were part of an overall sustainable long term plan, rather than disparate groups each defending their fiefdom.