General Updates and News

[mcmcclassic]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Every 30 minutes, so you are likely talking a 45-minute transit should you just miss the previous one. Unacceptable.

It runs every 15 mins during peak times (which includes rush hour). I work at Scotia Square and live in downtown Dartmouth. If I miss the 8am ferry, I can grab a bus instead and be there like 5-10 minutes later.

People in bigger cities spend longer times on public transit, how come people here have such a big problem with it? My solution is if you hate your commute time, move closer to where you work.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by mcmcclassic

It runs every 15 mins during peak times (which includes rush hour). I work at Scotia Square and live in downtown Dartmouth. If I miss the 8am ferry, I can grab a bus instead and be there like 5-10 minutes later.

Unless the house of cards that is rush hour traffic has an incident and the bridge clogs as it does with more and more frequency of late.

People in bigger cities spend longer times on public transit, how come people here have such a big problem with it? My solution is if you hate your commute time, move closer to where you work.

We are not talking commutes here. We are discussing the concept of making the 2 downtowns seamless for work, shopping, etc all day long.

[halifaxboyns]

Maybe I'm just different; but I like the idea of two downtowns in Halifax. Dartmouth downtown has such great potential to grow - Halifax has been growing and is eventually going to run out of opportunity spaces (there are only so many parking lots!).

I'd love to see more mixed use (not totally office) developments show up in Dartmouth and boost the population so that the ferry has a good balance of people going both ways during rush hours. I think it would be great for people from Halifax to enjoy the view of dt Dartmouth as it grows up. So the next few years will be quite interesting.

[Hali87]

I agree, and it seems like downtown Dartmouth is slowly (re)-developing in this way already. It could end up looking dramatically different than downtown Halifax, since the scale, character, and prevalence of heritage buildings is quite different, as is the topography (and there are no viewplanes). The street system is also quite different and there are interesting features like the canal, the peace pavillion and all of the lakes. There's also the view of downtown Halifax, better access to McNab's Island, and the completely untapped Lawlor's Island. By virtue of the fact that dt Dartmouth will probably follow dt Halifax in terms of development, it will also probably end up looking more "futuristic" (since the buildings will be designed further into the future). Concentrating more employment in Dartmouth could also ease congestion on the bridges (since people from Cole Harbour etc. are more likely to be able to work on their side of the bridge) and could ease congestion on the Bedford Highway and Bi-Hi/Bayers as some commuters from Bedford/Sackville etc. are diverted to the east side of the harbour via Magazine Hill. I can picture dt Dartmouth looking a lot like Gatineau in a decade or two.

[Keith P.]

DT Dartmouth has such a messed-up street network that I think it will require some significant work to make it viable should growth occur. In fact I think the street/traffic patterns are a real impediment to its growth. The Dartmouth Common blocks the main Wyse Rd entryway to the downtown from the MacD bridge. The other N-S main drag, Victoria Rd, ends just before it connects to the DT and you are forced to travel in a convoluted pattern to get DT. Victoria could be fixed more easily than the Wyse connection. But neither is easy.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Transit in Toronto is totally screwed and will probably get a lot worse before it gets better. I actually feel it's possible Halifax might have a meaningful rapid-transit expansion before another line even opens in Toronto (save the under-construction and three-decades delayed Eglinton LRT, killed my Mike Harris for exactly the same pandering political reasons).

It is sad to think of the public infrastructure that was built in Toronto in the 1950's-70's and compare that to what is being planned and built now. The subway there first opened in 1954, before Montreal, even though Toronto was the smaller city and was less than a quarter the size it is today. When people say the transit system there is good, they are really talking about what was inherited from that era, not what is being built today. It's much like how some of the best parts of Halifax are inherited from about 1860. I genuinely like Toronto but I have a hard time seeing it as a model for transit development or planning and politics in general.

Vancouver on the other hand has seen a huge amount of active transit development over the last 3 decades (Canada Line completed 2010, Evergreen Line well underway now), and transit here works well. Your train or bus comes every few minutes at rush hour, you can take transit to the airport, out to the ferry, up a mountain to go hiking, or one of the night buses at 4 a.m. The automated SkyTrain and Canada Line systems are also much more modern than Toronto's subway, and much closer to something that might be built in Halifax someday. The geography here is more like Halifax too.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

I can picture dt Dartmouth looking a lot like Gatineau in a decade or two.

This makes me imagine the Dartmouth of today but with a couple of dreary 2 million square foot federal government office complexes and a museum.

[hokus83]

I personally would have preferred some of the north end development boom happening in downtown Dartmouth and wyse road, I'm kind of hopping thats the next area of focus. Those parking lots in downtown dartmouth are massive and there are so many of them. More than anything I think Dartmouth Crossing should have filled up those areas, it would have made it a really amazing place.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

It is sad to think of the public infrastructure that was built in Toronto in the 1950's-70's and compare that to what is being planned and built now.

Vancouver on the other hand has seen a huge amount of active transit development over the last 3 decades (Canada Line completed 2010, Evergreen Line well underway now), and transit here works well. Your train or bus comes every few minutes at rush hour, you can take transit to the airport, out to the ferry, up a mountain to go hiking, or one of the night buses at 4 a.m. The automated SkyTrain and Canada Line systems are also much more modern than Toronto's subway, and much closer to something that might be built in Halifax someday. The geography here is more like Halifax too.

I moved from Calgary to Vancouver and lived there for a while just as the Millennium line was being finished, and even back then it was pretty good. It became my defacto notion of a big city transit system for a while. Moving to Toronto a few years later, I was initially impressed with the subway (felt very 'big city') but as I became more familiar with just how huge the city's land area was, the more rinky dink the TTC came to feel. Vancouver has very clearly outpaced Toronto in transit, to the point that it will be enormously financially painful for Toronto to catch up, if it even can.

Halifax's system, while problematic in a lot of ways (no true rapid transit, too many windey and indirect routes, completely pitiful Sunday service) doesn't actually feel like a huge step down from TO. Which seems like a crazy statement, but you probably have to live with the TTC a while to appreciate how terribly inefficient and inadequate it is.

[someone123]

Part of it for visitors at least is that when you're staying downtown and taking the subway to the ROM or whatever on a Wednesday afternoon it seems pretty great. Toronto transit is not good when you're trying to get downtown from Scarborough, let alone if you are trying to get to work in, say, Mississauga. I doubt the average experience of a rush hour commuter in Toronto is any better than Halifax, even though parts of Toronto's system are nicer and more developed. I had a somewhat miserable commute for a while in Toronto and that involved travelling a short 10 km or so in the city (TTC only) back in 2005.

That being said, I do find the city comparisons misguided sometimes. People in Halifax should really be looking at what their commutes could be like and how much it would cost to make them so. Other cities might provide inspiration but whether or not they're better or worse doesn't really matter. To use a far-fetched example, if it were possible to take Halifax's commutes down to 2 minutes from 10 minutes by paying $500M* it would absolutely be worthwhile, regardless of the fact that the starting point is already better than other places. The goal in Halifax should be the best possible quality of life for locals, not beating some other city!

Toronto's subway does feel more "big city" than Vancouver but a lot of those same characteristics are actually bad in terms of efficiency of service. For example, Toronto's subway cars are much heavier so they take more energy to move around and accelerate more slowly than newer, lighter vehicles. As I pointed out, they also have drivers and attendants, which might seem interesting but is more expensive and less reliable than an automated system.

* I am deliberately picking $500M here because this is the scale of investment that should be on the table for a transit overhaul. Part of why transit isn't getting anywhere in Halifax is that little money is being spent on it.

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by hokus83

I personally would have preferred some of the north end development boom happening in downtown Dartmouth and wyse road, I'm kind of hopping thats the next area of focus. Those parking lots in downtown dartmouth are massive and there are so many of them. More than anything I think Dartmouth Crossing should have filled up those areas, it would have made it a really amazing place.

Yep, and other parts of the brown sites near Alderney Gates could have been used as a new transit "hub", rather than that stupid parking lot behind the Sportsplex.

This would have increased fairy use, and made much more sense, logistically, in every way.

Of course, Tim Bousquet opposed this idea, but only because it would have extended his own personal bus ride by about 5-10min a day.

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Halifax's system, while problematic in a lot of ways (no true rapid transit, too many windey and indirect routes, completely pitiful Sunday service) doesn't actually feel like a huge step down from TO. Which seems like a crazy statement, but you probably have to live with the TTC a while to appreciate how terribly inefficient and inadequate it is.

I have to stop you right there, Dry, because there is no way in hell that our transit system is anywhere near Toronto's, even if TTC hasn't been properly expanded since the 1950's, and is pretty terrible and inefficient.

As bad as the TTC is, and its future expansion plans, you can easily live in Toronto without a car; and use a combination of subways, streetcars, and buses, to get to pretty much anything of need or interest in and around the. I mean, on any given weekend, you can ride the TTC and there would be tonnes of people, particularly families riding the subway, to a Leafs or Jay's game or some other city event.

You'd *never* see that in Halifax, and it's why our existing transit won't ameliorate our congestion problems until we build something that is fast and relatively efficient enough such that regular, middle class families, will use. Unless you get families out of cars, you won't ease traffic. Of course, Toronto has serious congestion problems, but it's one of the largest cities in North America. We're "Halifax is small" as every keeps saying over and over.

In other words, I think Halifax Transit is most definitely a big step down from the TTC. There is so much in and around the city that is just not properly serviced, that unless you have all the time in the world to drive buses for hours, you'd probably never see or visit.

One example, is Halifax Transit's pitiful connection to the airport-- a case in point. We have a pathetic single bus, that isn't even meant for passengers for God sakes, and it takes forever and for some reason makes these bizarre, windy stops along the way in low density areas like Fall River (?)., to make sure the two airport employees living out there have a lift. In Toronto, the subway + 192 airport rocket ain't bad at all, even during rush hour. And even this, they're fixing with a better link.

Part of the problem is we decided to build the Halifax airport in Truro for some idiotic reason, rendering any sensible transit option incredibly expensive beyond incredibly expensive cabs. But still.

[ILoveHalifax]

Originally Posted by counterfactual

Part of the problem is we decided to build the Halifax airport in Truro for some idiotic reason,

It was built where it is because studies indicated that location was much less likely to have fog.

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

It was built where it is because studies indicated that location was much less likely to have fog.

I know this is the standard account, that I've always heard.

But I'm skeptical. The "official history" to the Halifax Airport (on the airport website) suggests it took a while to get a proper site approved, but there is no mention of weather pattern concerns in the search. Instead, it suggest NIMBY concerns went into the site selection, noting explicitly that the land near the "Airport boundary is sparsely settled", with the closest communities notably being 8km (Enfield) and 12km (Waverly) away:

http://hiaa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/History-in-English1.pdf

Our airport is the furthest from the city it serves than any other airport/city pairing in Canada, at 38 km away from the city centre, according to that history. That is ridiculous; you'd think we were the only province that experiences fog or weather disturbances...

In fact, I wouldn't at all be surprised if the "weather/fog" thing, if legit, was only part of the story, with the usual Halifax NIMBY concerns also at play: put it out in the middle of nowhere, away from anyone who might complain about it.

[ILoveHalifax]

I'm just repeating what I heard at the time.
Shearwater was our airport before Stanfield and there were lots of fog problems there. Again just repeating what I heard at the time. Of course fog might have been a bigger problem than it is today with better technology.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

It was built where it is because studies indicated that location was much less likely to have fog.

The legend is that once the trees were cut down out there to build it, that it suddenly developed a fog problem.

When you think back to the late 1950s there were all sorts of closer locations possible given the lack of development nearer to the city. I wonder what the other short-listed locations were at the time.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by counterfactual

I have to stop you right there, Dry, because there is no way in hell that our transit system is anywhere near Toronto's, even if TTC hasn't been properly expanded since the 1950's, and is pretty terrible and inefficient.

As bad as the TTC is, and its future expansion plans, you can easily live in Toronto without a car; and use a combination of subways, streetcars, and buses, to get to pretty much anything of need or interest in and around the. I mean, on any given weekend, you can ride the TTC and there would be tonnes of people, particularly families riding the subway, to a Leafs or Jay's game or some other city event.

You'd *never* see that in Halifax, and it's why our existing transit won't ameliorate our congestion problems until we build something that is fast and relatively efficient enough such that regular, middle class families, will use. Unless you get families out of cars, you won't ease traffic. Of course, Toronto has serious congestion problems, but it's one of the largest cities in North America. We're "Halifax is small" as every keeps saying over and over.

In other words, I think Halifax Transit is most definitely a big step down from the TTC. There is so much in and around the city that is just not properly serviced, that unless you have all the time in the world to drive buses for hours, you'd probably never see or visit.

One example, is Halifax Transit's pitiful connection to the airport-- a case in point. We have a pathetic single bus, that isn't even meant for passengers for God sakes, and it takes forever and for some reason makes these bizarre, windy stops along the way in low density areas like Fall River (?)., to make sure the two airport employees living out there have a lift. In Toronto, the subway + 192 airport rocket ain't bad at all, even during rush hour. And even this, they're fixing with a better link.

Part of the problem is we decided to build the Halifax airport in Truro for some idiotic reason, rendering any sensible transit option incredibly expensive beyond incredibly expensive cabs. But still.

Let me lob this ball right back at you!

No doubt, TTC is an improvement--having the subway service attractions like the museum district and Rogers Centre is a big deal. That's when you really see families on the subway, because to drive downtown would be hellish--so they park at a suburban station and subway in.

But I would say it's actually not that easy to live in Toronto without a car, unless you live centrally. No one in North York or Scarborough or Etobicoke (the equivalents of say, Bedford, Dartmouth, or Clayton Park) has decent transit access, except for the extremely small minority adjacent to a subway station, and even then the only place it goes is straight downtown and back out again. Likewise, it's pretty easy to live in central Halifax without a car.

Here's one way Toronto's system is clearly better: the streetcar routes are extremely straight and predictable--none of Halifax's loop routes all up, down, and around. So even though they're slow and smelly and break down all the time, they offer ease of use and predictability, which is crucial. It's easy for a newcomer to figure out the system since the main routes just go back and forth on the main streets. But that's also partly a factor of the city's rigid and unbroken grid.

Anyway, there's lots of interest in Toronto that isn't served by rapid transit, from zoo to the science centre to York University, even (though soon that will be fixed). I'd say the airport service is a draw. We have that one awful bus, but in TO you have to haul yourself and your baggage out to Kipling Station, then transfer to the 192 "Rocket", which is the most inaptly named route in the universe.

Anyway, yeah, definitely the TTC is better than our system, but I guess my point was just that it's not by nearly as much as it should be. In TO, the system served me reasonably effectively in getting around the central part of town, and getting anywhere else was usually slow, cumbersome, and frustrating. Halifax is basically the same: Easy to get around the peninsula, frustrating outside that.

[Spire]

Originally Posted by counterfactual

Yep, and other parts of the brown sites near Alderney Gates could have been used as a new transit "hub", rather than that stupid parking lot behind the Sportsplex.

This would have increased fairy use, and made much more sense, logistically, in every way.

Of course, Tim Bousquet opposed this idea, but only because it would have extended his own personal bus ride by about 5-10min a day.

I hate to disagree with you, but a "Bridge Terminal" located near the ferry terminal would be a bad idea. For starters, it's not just Bousquet's commute that would have been extended, but the sizable number of people who live in North Dartmouth, not to mention many people working in Burnside, who would have to deal with an extra 5-10 minutes in their commute - do that every day, and it starts to add up. It would be a pointless detour for people who have no use for the ferry, which is essentially anyone who doesn't work in downtown Halifax. Also, the increased running time that the (now longer) routes would need would result in tens of thousands of dollars of additional expenses over the course of a year for transit.

When building a transit terminal, the most logical place to locate it is generally at the point where the most routes converge. The bridge creates a choke point, so the Bridge Terminal is really an ideal location. Unfortunately, Halifax Transit wasn't thinking this way when they chose the location of the new Lacewood Terminal...

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Spire

I hate to disagree with you, but a "Bridge Terminal" located near the ferry terminal would be a bad idea. For starters, it's not just Bousquet's commute that would have been extended, but the sizable number of people who live in North Dartmouth, not to mention many people working in Burnside, who would have to deal with an extra 5-10 minutes in their commute - do that every day, and it starts to add up. It would be a pointless detour for people who have no use for the ferry, which is essentially anyone who doesn't work in downtown Halifax. Also, the increased running time that the (now longer) routes would need would result in tens of thousands of dollars of additional expenses over the course of a year for transit.

When building a transit terminal, the most logical place to locate it is generally at the point where the most routes converge. The bridge creates a choke point, so the Bridge Terminal is really an ideal location. Unfortunately, Halifax Transit wasn't thinking this way when they chose the location of the new Lacewood Terminal...

The thing is, those two locations really are not that far apart. But they are separated by a steep hill and made even further isolated from each other by the illogical Downtown Dartmouth street layout. The ferry is made an unattractive option for anyone north of its location due to the location of the terminal, the terrain and the street layout. It is just very hard to get to and from the ferry and hence it is underutilized.

It would have never happened of course but the Dartmouth Common, located about equidistant between the two sites, would have been an ideal location for the new terminal if a few street upgrades were included. But that would be impossible for the traditionalists. Now they have installed an absurd clay oven thing there at significant cost to let a few crazies cook pizza once every few weeks, and next they are planting much of it as an "orchard" to grow fruit. Insanity. The lefty loons are taking over.

[JET]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

The legend is that once the trees were cut down out there to build it, that it suddenly developed a fog problem.

When you think back to the late 1950s there were all sorts of closer locations possible given the lack of development nearer to the city. I wonder what the other short-listed locations were at the time.

Dartmouth Crossing area would have been a very central location for an airport.