Halifax Traffic

[Reesor]

I think the biggest issue with traffic is that there's rarely a start-to-finish solution for any of the major corridors that have traffic. You can put all the bus lanes on Windmill Road and Barrington Street that you want, but if the MacKay Bridge/Windsor St Exchange is backed up, busses sit in traffic. The Bayers Road/Young St/Robie St corridor has lots of bus lanes. But if busses are backed up coming off the highway or waiting for 3 red lights at Robie/Young, there are still major delays. Express busses from Sackville to downtown have lots of priority signals and bus lanes. But remain stuck in traffic at key points along their route.

What's been done so far are the easiest, cheapest solutions. The remaining pieces to the start-to-finish solutions are expensive. There's land to be bought, overpasses to be widened/re-done, a 10-figure new MacKay bridge to be built. These projects would allow for that start-to-finish solution in many cases, but take considerable time and money. I think that's why the city isn't in a rush to implement a bus rapid transit solution yet. What's the sense in having more frequent busses if those busses are sitting on the MacKay bridge or in Bayers Road traffic out of service just to get to the start of their route? What's the point of having busses every 5 minutes on core routes when all those busses will end up sitting in traffic during a huge chunk of their routes?

The paradox is that these small, subtle changes have taken so long to implement that the city's population is out-pacing the improvements. The 107 Extension is a game changer. Everything else feels like treading water.

This by no means is meant to discourage the city from making small, subtle improvements. Put the transit priority signal on Wyse Road turning left onto the bridge. You have a beautiful transit terminal housing 10+ bus routes that go over the bridge during rush hour, but have busses sitting at a light. There are countless other examples. The bus lanes and priority signals that are in place are much better than not having them. But you don't need a 6-figure independent study to see where the problems lie. Same problems as there was 30 years ago: key choke points that would take trunks of money and land to fix.