Canadian cities that should have been bigger than they actually are?

[someone123]

Not sure where it is now but I remember an old article discussing Saint John city council's plans around 1900. At the time, they were debating building a "subway", which referred to an underground tunnel that would have carried Birney cars. I think they were imagining something like the Tremont Street Subway built in Boston in the late 1800's. Some speculated that the city would have 500,000 inhabitants in the 1900's.

I think both Halifax and Saint John might have gotten some streetcar tunnels had they grown a bit more around that 1880-1920 period when that sort of infrastructure was built. But who knows if it would have been maintainable or useful in the postwar era. Halifax did get the "rail cut" in the 1910's; a trench was blasted in rock in the South End so the rail line could operate at a lower level with the surface streets running over bridges.

There's no Northwest Arm bridge in Halifax, but I'm sure something nice would have been built if the city had been just a little bigger around 1910-1960. Later in the postwar era there was a lot more opposition to projects like these. The rail cut would never have been built if it hadn't gotten done by the 1910's or so. I feel like that's a level of ambition and foresight in public works you don't see much today.