Haifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Mark, Mark, Mark… you are nothing if not predictable. I was just poking your bearish self for your proclivity to make pronouncements about your future behavior which inevitably you transgress in short order as in this instance. I found it funny, as I usually do. It goes back, I think, to the old British schlick about longtime politicians getting up in front of a crowd to make yet another speech and starting off by saying “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking…” and then making a stem-winder of an oration. In your case you state your withdrawal from a discussion and then dive back in. It’s as entertaining as it is predictable.

As are you, Keith. I think we both are honest and somewhat transparent as to how we feel about certain things, though I feel that your opinions can be much darker and more negative than mine. Whether you find my honesty amusing or not is not really a concern to me, nor is your opinion on whether I change my mind after I state how I am thinking in the moment. I have been dragged through the muck by others for the same reasons, but honestly I think that shows their (and yours FTM) weakness rather than mine. I wouldn’t post here if I felt that I had to do so on false pretences, and as I said before, don’t read it if it bothers you. Instead, however, you just can’t resist reading and then volunteering your commentary, can you? Which is fine because I find you amusing and predictable as well. Hey, if we can both amuse one another, it can’t be all bad, right?

To harken back to a former blowup, there was a time when you were yanking everybody’s chain over bike lanes or some other foolishness, and I tried to point out to the crowd that you were just trying to get a rise out if them, and that you were very transparent and predictable, but the (I suspect younger, less experienced) members of the crowd couldn’t grasp it or get past their anger towards you, and as a result of my advice/comment, me. One poster even came out of hiding to act as superhero and put me in my place, which was annoying and amusing at the same time. The takeaway from that is that you can’t get to me because I see through you, even if others can’t. It’s okay, though, because I’ve known others like you and have learned to understand where you’re coming from, and kind of appreciate that it comes from an honest place, even if the behaviour isn’t so great. Hopefully others will learn this in the future and not get so wound up by your comments.

Either way, it’s all good. Sorry for my long windedness. It’s my stream of consciousness, but not for everyone… i.e. you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. There are some posters for whom I read the first couple of lines to see where it’s going, and often move on from there. Feel free to do that with me. It won’t hurt my feelings…

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

This has been the norm around here (BC/WA, elsewhere) for a decade or so. A camera reads the license plate and the owner of the vehicle is billed.

I’ve used this system on the Golden Gate Bridge as well. It’s seamless, and the cost was just billed back by the rental car company. IIRC, it was something like $2.50 US per crossing which didn’t seem unreasonable. I honestly thought we were going that route in Halifax, which still seems best case to me. But, whatever…

[Nouvellecosse]

I've long found it mysterious how "honesty" is often used to apologia for poor behaviour. As if just doing and saying whatever comes into one's head without empathy or consideration for others is somehow an admirable trait. It's also a contradiction to praise someone for honesty at the same time as admitting they just doing certain things to "yank everyone's chain." People aren't any less honest if they're diplomatic, pragmatic and conciliatory which just means they're trying to elicit a positive reaction rather than a negative one. They just honestly care about people's feelings and/or finding agreement and middle ground whereas the other "honest" person doesn't. I just don't see why people deserve any less credit for honestly wanting to create positive, productive reactions compared to someone honestly wanting to anger or annoy.

[Dmajackson]

Originally Posted by q12

Ambulances have to cross the bridges and I've witness first hand how ridiculously slow it is for an EHS ambulance with lights and sirens in bumper to bumper traffic (both directions) as vehicles have no shoulder to move over

I got a first-hand experience of this happening a month ago. I was crossing the MacDonald Bridge heading to Halifax in the evening (so one lane). Traffic was flowing great when I got on the bridge. I watched the car just a few ahead of me stall just after the top of the rise. From where I was stuck I could see in my rear-view mirror all the way back to the tollbooth. I watched Bridge Patrol turn on its lights and sirens relatively fast. But it took OVER 20 MINUTES for them to get through the gridlock. Once they got to the spot it was only a couple of minutes for them to block oncoming traffic with their vehicle and place traffic cones to allow traffic to go around the stalled car.

The main reason I could see for the slow response time was oncoming traffic was refusing to pull into the right lane to let Bridge Patrol go by. Traffic in that direction happened to be very light that evening so it wasn't a congestion issue but rather a lot of drivers failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.

As for the toll question that is being debated I'll write out my idea. First though, I have to note that I use both bridges on a daily basis and I live close to the MacDonald Bridge (so I am directly affected by the congestion it causes).

I think the best plan is for the MacKay Bridge to have it's toll removed. The MacDonald Bridge should have it's toll doubled and the center lane converted to a permanent transit/emergency-only lane (reverses like it currently does).

MacKay Bridge can handle more traffic than it currently does. It's part of the highway network so the tolls actually do slow down the traffic as a result. MacDonald Bridge can't handle the increased traffic from removing tolls so it's better to be converted to transit priority with congestion pricing to keep traffic volumes low. The tolls on MacDonald don't interfere with the traffic flow since the output is controlled by the traffic lights on either side.

The transit-only lane on MacDonald could go a step further and tie directly into the left-turn at Gottingen. This would help Route 1 and maybe some other redirected routes heading downtown.

[ns_kid]

On an unconnected but somewhat related note, after delays, legal challenges and years of study and debate, congestion pricing became the law in New York City this morning. The instructive piece is that it relies on a vast electronic tolling network. Something like 110 readers (mounted overhead or on roadside poles) will read the electronic (E-Z) passes of cars entering lower Manhattan Island (below 60th Street or, roughly, the area south of Central Park). If there's no valid E-Z pass, the readers will capture the licence plate via infrared cameras and plate owners will get a bill in the mail. There are a bunch of fare classes and exemptions but the base daytime fare for a passenger automobile is $9 for cars with a pass and $13.50 for those without. There apparently are hefty fines for those caught trying to fool the scanners.

Proponents claim the scheme will reduce congestion in the affected area by 13 per cent while raising $15 billion over the first five years to be directed to the Metropolitan Transit Authority for subway, commuter rail and bus improvements.

Whether congestion pricing will achieve the intended results for NYC I cannot say. I share it just as a point of interest that the foundation of the system is a complex electronic tolling model that makes the Halifax Harbour Bridges problem seem like child's play.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by ns_kid

Whether congestion pricing will achieve the intended results for NYC I cannot say. I share it just as a point of interest that the foundation of the system is a complex electronic tolling model that makes the Halifax Harbour Bridges problem seem like child's play.

I’m sure many locals will chime in to say that it could not possibly work here because… of whatever.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I’m sure many locals will chime in to say that it could not possibly work here because… of whatever.

I'm sure Waye Mason is paying attention to the current experiment in the Big Apple.

How about congestion charges on everything south of Quinpool Road. Yeah, that's the ticket..........

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

LOL Imagine charging people going to the emergency rooms of our hospitals or visiting Point Pleasant Park or the family going to visit grandma. The list of absurdities could go on and on. With the peninsula not being primarily a business district with mostly daily commuters we'd need to find a better way to apply a congestion charge. Maybe a surcharge on office building parking?

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Arrdeeharharharbour

LOL Imagine charging people going to the emergency rooms of our hospitals or visiting Point Pleasant Park or the family going to visit grandma. The list of absurdities could go on and on. With the peninsula not being primarily a business district with mostly daily commuters we'd need to find a better way to apply a congestion charge. Maybe a surcharge on office building parking?

I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the idea of congestion pricing, but I more or less agree with this. New York is the only North American city with real congestion pricing, and its congestion is far beyond what we experience. And even there it's been an ongoing political showdown to implement it.

There are far simpler, more effective and less politically fraught ways to ease our comparatively modest congestions problems--most of all, building real rapid transit.

[Nouvellecosse]

Congestion charges are about eliminating congestion, not about judging whether or not people are making a trip for a reason we approve of. So you apply them based on where congestion occurs and where it's important to move freely. But fortunately the charge isn't something you pay in real time so there's no risk of someone being refused entry due to a lack of money. So it's completely possible to apply a waiver after the fact. The hospital could simply give qualifying patients and visitors a code they can enter online to clear the charge or something. But those are implementation details, not core aspects of the concept.

But going down the whole, "my trip is important so I should be exempt" rabbit hole is a non-starter. Pretty much everyone considers their trip important whether or not they evoke grandma to make the story more heart-string tugging. Especially since such stories are always so one-sided. People always use them to attack congestion pricing but never in support despite them being equally valid reasons to support the price. After all, the more important a trip is, the less you want to be impeded from making it by having the roads blocked by congestion. Hospital emergency access is the perfect situation to illustrate why it's important to move around quickly and easily without getting stuck in traffic.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

There are far simpler, more effective and less politically fraught ways to ease our comparatively modest congestions problems--most of all, building real rapid transit.

Rapid transit does not eliminate congestion. Obviously. Because every city with congestion pricing has a rapid transit system and typically have larger and more advanced systems than cities without congestion pricing. And ironically, the lack of rapid transit is one of the major reasons I've heard people use to oppose congestion pricing in Halifax.

But the idea that building rapid transit in Halifax is "far simpler, more effective and less politically fraught"? No only is it not effective for reasons I mentioned, but congestion pricing is clearly far simpler. And given the cost of rapid transit and Halifax's small size, I'm not so sure of the politics either. Neither option would be easy, but building rapid transit would either involve enormous cost or re-allocatng road space away from general traffic. Neither of which tend to play well politically.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Rapid transit does not eliminate congestion.

That's true but people don't only care about congestion per se, they're often interested in their ability to get around. Central London is very congested but you can efficiently travel between many points using the tube and it carries a much higher throughput of passengers than the streets. In Japan they have some very efficient commuting and inter-city travel options on bullet trains even though driving remains pretty slow.

There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in Halifax, like expanding the network of dedicated bus lanes or improving some of the bottlenecks like the Windsor St Exchange. And I think it makes sense to begin planning for LRT now so that transit improvements can be guided toward that eventual goal. Expanding bridge capacity is also obviously needed eventually and the MacKay needs upgrading/replacement. Halifax doesn't have intractable transportation problems, there just hasn't been much infrastructure investment.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

That's true but people don't only care about congestion per se, they're often interested in their ability to get around...

That's what people should care about. But in NA I often hear transit advertised as a way to reduce traffic volumes on the road, I assume as a way to gain support for transit investment from motorists who make up the majority of the public in many cities. And I think that is a mistake because it risks transit being seen as a failure when it inevitably fails to do something that it was never intended to do to begin with.

The biggest take away is that transit expansion and CP work best together. They are partners rather than alternatives to one another. CP attracts greater transit ridership which makes transit more successful while also providing a funding mechanism to help make transit expansion possible. But transit expansion without CP means that feeder buses don't work very well, and buses provide the bulk of transit trips in all but the densest cities. So rapid transit then also doesn't work as well since it's harder to get to/from the stations due to the buses getting mired in traffic. So you have to fork out for expensive right-of-ways sooner than you otherwise would while not having a funding mechanism to support them. And the funding for transit becomes harder to justify since ridership is lower because of the bus situation. It therefore pits funding for road infrastructure and transit infrastructure against each other.

Meanwhile, CP without transit expansion doesn't provide good alternatives for people to get around if they do choose not to drive. So people who would otherwise be coaxed off the road to reduce their costs end up forking out the extra money to pay the CP making the CP less effective at the same price. The result is that people either just pay more for trips making the city less affordable or just they don't get to go where and when they want. Of course transit expansion doesn't necessarily mean rail transit or even BRT. It can just be increased frequency of the existing bus services which would operate faster and more reliably since they aren't stuck in traffic. Halifax could just double its bus frequency and add a few more express routes for instance. But buses are less attractive to some people and don't have the capacity of rail which might be needed if a large portion of people do decide to switch to transit. So CP and transit expansion work best together.

That doesn't mean that rapid transit isn't useful on its own since most cities with rapid transit do not have CP and their RT systems still manage to do lots of valuable work. They just work better together.

[Keith P.]

"Congestion pricing" without any viable, cheaper alternative is simply a tax grab. On this point there can be no debate.

(emphasis added to keep in spirit with Nouvellecosse)

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

"Congestion pricing" without any viable, cheaper alternative is simply a tax grab. On this point there can be no debate.

(emphasis added to keep in spirit with Nouvellecosse)

Yeah, congestion pricing would not work here. We are not big enough with no other alternatives to get in out of the city.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Rapid transit does not eliminate congestion. Obviously. Because every city with congestion pricing has a rapid transit system and typically have larger and more advanced systems than cities without congestion pricing. And ironically, the lack of rapid transit is one of the major reasons I've heard people use to oppose congestion pricing in Halifax.

But the idea that building rapid transit in Halifax is "far simpler, more effective and less politically fraught"? No only is it not effective for reasons I mentioned, but congestion pricing is clearly far simpler. And given the cost of rapid transit and Halifax's small size, I'm not so sure of the politics either. Neither option would be easy, but building rapid transit would either involve enormous cost or re-allocatng road space away from general traffic. Neither of which tend to play well politically.

I don’t think there can be any question that transit expansion/improvement—something seen as a service—would be more politically viable than a congestion tax, which most people would see, rightly or wrongly, as a penalty for driving.

And yes, transit helps alleviate road congestion. It doesn’t fix it, but the evidence is clear that it is part of the toolkit.

Anyway, it’s all a moot point. We’re never going to get congestion pricing here. The majority of the citizenry would oppose it, downtown business would oppos it,, rural residents who want to access services like health care and universities in the city would oppose it, and no political party will make it part of their platform. It’s just not going to happen, at least not for decades at minimum.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Anyway, it’s all a moot point. We’re never going to get congestion pricing here. The majority of the citizenry would oppose it, downtown business would oppos it,, rural residents who want to access services like health care and universities in the city would oppose it, and no political party will make it part of their platform. It’s just not going to happen, at least not for decades at minimum.

I like congestion pricing in theory but in practice I agree. It is very politically difficult. And if you want to apply it fairly, it should apply everywhere. The highways should be user pay as well, and the money should go into transportation improvements while maintaining free-flowing traffic and improving public transport options. Applying meaningful congestion pricing to parts of the city without improving transit while maintaining free car traffic areas outside, on the other hand, encourages sprawl.

I think transit and infrastructure improvements are much much easier politically and they seem to already sort of be happening. The city needs an LRT plan that sets out some corridors to be upgraded for some future time horizon (like 10-20 years). Then the upgrades can begin to add electrified buses, transit-only lanes, reversing lanes, flyovers, tunnels, etc. Hopefully the JRTA will do this. Technically speaking this seems easier than ever with self-driving technology and battery electrics, and Halifax is already larger than several Canadian cities when they first began to develop LRT (Calgary, Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo).

[JET]

Originally Posted by q12

Did you even watch the video I posted? How is that not evidence?

I've driven across the bridge during peak hours more times than I can count, and I have seen first hand the congestion caused solely by the tolls. The tolls also cause accidents which lead to more congestion. It can't be more evident. The current outdated toll booths 🞵🞵🞵🞵.

So we can confidently say the design of the current ancient toll booths increase overall travel times during peak periods.

Here is when the toll booths didn't cause a problem in 1970:

Looks very similar to April 2020

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I don’t think there can be any question that transit expansion/improvement—something seen as a service—would be more politically viable than a congestion tax, which most people would see, rightly or wrongly, as a penalty for driving.

Sure, if you abstract the discussion into being about "transit expansion" rather than "rapid transit". Clearly the generic concept of transit expansion isn't too politically difficult since we already have transit so transit expansion could be something as simple as adding extra routes or frequency. But rapid transit is a very different thing that neither we, nor most NA cities in our size range have achieved. So i stand by my skepticism that rapid transit would be any easier.

Originally Posted by Drybrain

And yes, transit helps alleviate road congestion. It doesn’t fix it, but the evidence is clear that it is part of the toolkit.

It helps in the same sense as road widening - that is temporarily until travel patterns adjust and road fill back up again. As a planning major and decades long transit enthusiast I have not seen evidence that it plays any significant role in reducing congestion long term. So no it is not clear until I see the actual evidence you're referring to. But it is an intuitive sounding "truthism" I often hear repeated.

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Anyway, it’s all a moot point. We’re never going to get congestion pricing here. The majority of the citizenry would oppose it, downtown business would oppos it,, rural residents who want to access services like health care and universities in the city would oppose it, and no political party will make it part of their platform. It’s just not going to happen, at least not for decades at minimum.

There are many things throughout history that have been deemed politically untenable until they actually happened. They said the same thing about same-🞵🞵🞵 marriage when I was a kid. It just wasn't feasible and activists were urged to focus on more reasonable targets. Yet the laws changed by the time I was a teenager. Many unfamiliar or intuitive ideas are opposed at first, but it's important to support policies based on the evidence rather than momentary public opinion. Or even more so, one's assumptions about public opinion. If a person doesn't think something is a good idea then fine. But then there's no need to hide behind the real or assumed opinions of others.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Dmajackson

I got a first-hand experience of this happening a month ago. I was crossing the MacDonald Bridge heading to Halifax in the evening (so one lane). Traffic was flowing great when I got on the bridge. I watched the car just a few ahead of me stall just after the top of the rise. From where I was stuck I could see in my rear-view mirror all the way back to the tollbooth. I watched Bridge Patrol turn on its lights and sirens relatively fast. But it took OVER 20 MINUTES for them to get through the gridlock. Once they got to the spot it was only a couple of minutes for them to block oncoming traffic with their vehicle and place traffic cones to allow traffic to go around the stalled car.

The main reason I could see for the slow response time was oncoming traffic was refusing to pull into the right lane to let Bridge Patrol go by. Traffic in that direction happened to be very light that evening so it wasn't a congestion issue but rather a lot of drivers failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.

As for the toll question that is being debated I'll write out my idea. First though, I have to note that I use both bridges on a daily basis and I live close to the MacDonald Bridge (so I am directly affected by the congestion it causes).

I think the best plan is for the MacKay Bridge to have it's toll removed. The MacDonald Bridge should have it's toll doubled and the center lane converted to a permanent transit/emergency-only lane (reverses like it currently does).

MacKay Bridge can handle more traffic than it currently does. It's part of the highway network so the tolls actually do slow down the traffic as a result. MacDonald Bridge can't handle the increased traffic from removing tolls so it's better to be converted to transit priority with congestion pricing to keep traffic volumes low. The tolls on MacDonald don't interfere with the traffic flow since the output is controlled by the traffic lights on either side.

The transit-only lane on MacDonald could go a step further and tie directly into the left-turn at Gottingen. This would help Route 1 and maybe some other redirected routes heading downtown.

I think this is by far the best assessment of the situation.