Halifax Traffic

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

I thought Strasbourg's transit system was interesting. It is a bit bigger than Halifax but not that much (860,000) and within the ballpark scale that a multi-decade transit plan for Halifax needs to consider.

Strasbourg has commuter rail (RER), high-speed rail, and most interestingly to me a 50 km tram system that relies on park-and-rides around the ends of the lines:
https://www.cts-strasbourg.eu/en/getting-around/park-and-ride/

I think that model could work well in Halifax. You would not park around SGR or Barrington or Gottingen. The typical user would either take it within the core with no parking required (except maybe for bike/scooter), or you'd come in from farther away and park at a suburban node like Mic Mac Mall or Lacewood. In Strasbourg you pay a flat rate equivalent to about $7 CAD that covers a full day's transit pass for all riders of the vehicle and parking. It's a system that can work well to integrate both a busy urban core with limited room for cars and car-oriented suburbs.

Wikipedia has details on the tramway itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_tramway

The capital cost has been modest even in recent years:



That's about $60M CAD for 1.8 km and 3 stops, completely within the doable range for Halifax. I think HRM is looking at $150M just for the Windsor Street Exchange. Expanding bottlenecks like that is likely significantly expensive relative to the cost of bypassing them with some higher-order transit.

That’s intriguing to say the least. I would definitely be on board with a plan like that for Halifax.