Bill Black just doesn't get it. Halterm is expanding, the grain elevator is busier than ever and you will never transform all of that property to low slung residential plus pave the rail cut. Perhaps you could dig the cut deeper and run a light rail/freight service under a street/greenway....but who pays?
New commuter road proposed
Black: Tear up rail tracks to Halifax core
By CLARE MELLOR Staff Reporter
Thu, May 19 - 5:48 PM
Halifax businessman Bill Black wants government to examine the possibility of a new commuter road for those trying to access or leave Halifax’s urban core.
"In a city our size . . . people who live in places like Sackville (shouldn’t be) taking an hour to get to work," Black told those attending a Halifax Club luncheon Wednesday.
He suggested the railway tracks that run from downtown Halifax to Bayers Road should be torn up and the rail cut paved for use by cars or buses, with an adjacent space for bicycle traffic.
"It would handle, at best, one lane each way. . . . The idea is to make very little change to the actual footprint of the real (rail) cut as it is."
The proposal, he said, would cost much less than a combined truck and rail route proposal that was studied in 2009.
The commuter road would not have intersections and would be accessed "at the Rotary and basically the bottom of the Bicentennial Highway," he said.
"This takes a lot of pressure off other routes into town."
Black’s proposal, published on his New Start Nova Scotia website, would involve buying Via Rail property. Just one passenger train and a cargo train use the south-end track each day, he said.
Black suggested that south-end lands associated with the rail yards and container terminal should become part of the downtown core. His plan entails getting rid of the container terminal near Point Pleasant Park by consolidating it with the one at Fairview Cove. "In my view, the prospects for the (Halifax) port, through no fault of the people who are running it, are very modest.
"All the traffic that we have today, in terms of the number of containers, can easily be handled in the Fairview Cove centre." Truck traffic in the downtown would be drastically reduced if the Halterm terminal near the park closes, Black said.
Getting rid of the "unsightly" Halifax grain elevators, also on Halifax Port Authority land, would also free up more valuable land, he said.
"We have this extraordinary valuable resource that is very, very seriously underemployed. . . . The other underemployed resource that we have is the rail cut," he said.
At least one person attending the lunch did not embrace Black’s idea of a commuter road.
"I look at Halifax and I think the last thing we need is another road in," one man said during a discussion that followed the talk.
"It is only going to encourage more people to live in the outskirts and to encourage more cars to be driving and commuting."
Contacted Wednesday, Coun. Sue Uteck (Northwest Arm-South End) said she has not seen Black’s proposal but the necessary expropriation of properties on peninsular Halifax to make way for such a project would make it unfeasible.
Coun. Jennifer Watts (Connaught-Quinpool) also hadn’t seen the proposal but said she also has concerns. "It would have a huge impact on existing homes in that district," she said.
"You need to look at the budget . . . the actual physical reality of being able to do that, and what (is) the impact on the existing housing stock in that area. Is that investment and actually bringing more cars into the downtown the direction that we really want to be putting our investment in?"
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